# Why reputation is not changed w.r.t Net votes?

I mean to say that when anybody asks a question here and he/she gets an upvote, his/her reputation is increased by $5$ and when he/she gets a downvote at the same question, his reputation is decreased by $2$. However the question have got Net vote equals to zero. So he/she must get no change in reputation. So it is helpful for two people, one who voted it up and other who voted that down, to stay equal by their personal reputation.

• In terms of reputation points 5 downvotes cancel the effect of two upvotes on a question (for an answer the ratio is 5 to 1). But the score on the question shows -3 at that point. This is the way it is supposed to be. When you get a bit more reputation (1000 rep, I think) you can see the vote counts. All you need to do then is to click the number giving the total score, and the display changes so that upvote and downvote counts are both visible (in place of their sum). – Jyrki Lahtonen Mar 23 '15 at 12:35
• These posts seem related: meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/16769/… and meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/2234/… – Martin Sleziak Mar 23 '15 at 13:37
• This is a policy of the entire stackexchange system, so you are better asking it in a higher place than the math.se meta. – GEdgar Mar 23 '15 at 14:03
• I think the reasoning might have been something like: Give +5 for a good question, +10 for a good answer because an answer is more work than a question, and give -2 for something bad. Also the fact that they didn't choose equal weights will be on purpose. I think it is more motivating for new users (and also maybe older users) this way, and I also think it works. Also they maybe assumed that there are always some users who easily downvote and to compensate for that they have a higher upvote value on questions for instance than the downvote value. – Pedro Mar 23 '15 at 14:04