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Yesterday I had a $-10$ reputation due to User Was Removed. Can I know which user was removed and in which answer I lost my reputation?

Thanks for any reputation.

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    $\begingroup$ Nope, not possible. See this similar feature-request (not a duplicate strictly speaking). $\endgroup$ Oct 30, 2015 at 12:57
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    $\begingroup$ One doesn't know whose upvotes are on answers. To identify which answer was affected, potentially one could use the database snapshot of StackExchange to compare votes on your answers now and then. $\endgroup$
    – hardmath
    Oct 30, 2015 at 17:19
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    $\begingroup$ I happened to wonder the same in past. From answer: "only users with >10k answers can see" who stole your reputation! $\endgroup$ Oct 31, 2015 at 7:49
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    $\begingroup$ @JessePFrancis: That previous Question concerned Deleted posts (which user with 10K reputation can see, if they know where to look), not Removed Users. $\endgroup$
    – hardmath
    Oct 31, 2015 at 13:05
  • $\begingroup$ until some party publicly tracks all users on this site, your desire is in vain. $\endgroup$
    – Nick
    Aug 5, 2018 at 18:38
  • $\begingroup$ @Nick Is it at all possible for some party to actually do this? $\endgroup$
    – Soham
    Aug 5, 2018 at 19:12
  • $\begingroup$ @tatan heck, even I could do this but I'm not sure the site's tos allows me. Setting up a million user database just to see who deletes their account on this network is an absurd project, especially since monetising from it would be difficult and cringey to do. $\endgroup$
    – Nick
    Aug 6, 2018 at 0:59

2 Answers 2

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In general, you can't know which user was removed, and which of your posts the removed user voted on. It is not under all circumstances impossible to find out beyond reasonable doubt, but one needs to make the right guess what to look for and where. Even moderators generally can't find that out. Most user removals that lead to reputation changes don't come to our attention at all, or only via the "user was removed" entry in some reputation history we look at (ours or somebody else's).

As Willie Wong wrote, making that information public would compromise the privacy of voting, thus it is very unlikely that it will be made accessible.

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There is a related question on Meta Stack Exchange: How can I find posts related to lost reputation due to a “user was removed” message?

Glorfindel's answer to this question provides a tool which can be used to find recent reputation changes, including the posts where reputation was change based on "user was removed" reason. (It relies on Stack Exchange's API - so unless Stack Exchange changes what is shown there, this tool can be used to find recent posts influenced by this.) Another answer on the same post suggests using SEDE - which is also what I describe below in more detail.

I will also add a link to somewhat similar question on Meta MathOverflow: Is it possible to know the list of removed users?

On this meta there is also this feature request: Is it possible to know which posts were affected by user removal? Although some objections against this were raised in the comments and the answer posted there.


What I describe here is not completely reliable but one possibility to get at least approximation of what you want is to compare scores (votes) on your posts at some two points before and after the user removal. Of course, this will include also other changes, not only the ones caused by the user removal.

You can find your reputation breakdown at https://math.stackexchange.com/reputation. Some users occasionally save the content of this page. So if you have saved this at some point and if you download it now, you can compare the two files and see what changes are there.

Another possibility is to use the Data Explorer (SEDE). The data in SEDE are updated once a week - Monday 03:00 UTC. So if you download scores of your posts from there soon after the removal and then once again a week later, you have status from two different weeks to compare.

For example, you can try some of these queries. You have to include your user id there.1 The results can then be downloaded in the form of a csv file. (Where each row corresponds to one result, so it is relatively easy to compare versions from different dates by various programs.2)


1 See: What is my user ID? and and Help with what is my user id and how do I check it?

2 Wikipedia: Comparison of file comparison tools

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