# Downvotes and the maximum daily reputation

Due mostly to my two answers to the popular question Are there any open mathematical puzzles?, I received $35$ upvotes today (in the sense of UTC time). As a user can only receive reputation for $20$ upvotes in one day, I received $200$ reputation from this activity. A couple of minutes ago I received a downvote (annoyingly, with no comment left) for my answer to the question Subgroups of $D_4$, and there was a deduction of $2$ reputation. So in a day with $35$ upvotes and one downvote, I had earned $198$ reputation. If I had received the downvote first and then the $35$ upvotes, I would have earned $200$ reputation (I know this because since writing, I received another upvote which gave we $2$ reputation).

Should the order of the votes effect the total reputation? Is this the way the system has to be in order for a user to be penalised when a post of theirs is downvoted?

• I was surprised that it works this way. This meta.SO thread seems to confirm it: Why do the up-votes after reaching daily rep cap not contribute to compensate the subsequent down-votes? Interestingly, as I learned from here (it was linked in the thread that Zev posted), this does not influence whether the day is counted towards Mortarboard, Epic, and Legendary badges. – Martin Sleziak Oct 20 '13 at 16:17
• Also, send my regards to Yaar. – Asaf Karagila Oct 20 '13 at 17:42
• One of the reasons that the order of votes matters is that he "day" refers to a 24 hour period, so it is a rolling total as opposed to a function which resets itself at midnight GMT or something. – user1729 Oct 20 '13 at 17:43
• @user1729: What is a rolling total? – Michael Albanese Oct 20 '13 at 17:45
• @MichaelAlbanese Sorry, the reputation contributing to your daily cap. If you earn 100rep at 0900 20/10/2013 and 100rep at 2100 20/10/2013 then at 0901 21/10/2013 you will be able to earn 100rep. – user1729 Oct 20 '13 at 17:51
• Would it be overkill to permit the evisceration of non-commenting down-voters? – copper.hat Oct 24 '13 at 7:14

If you mean "should" in the sense of "the system is designed to operate that way", then yes, the order of votes matters. This is similar to how downvotes and upvotes don't commute for new users, since a user's reputation is required to be $\geq 1$.