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I've noticed that if I post a question, and it gets an up vote(+5 rep), and I accidentally delete it, the reputation is deducted from the account. BUT, if it has negative votes(-2 rep), and I delete it, the reputation is restored to my account. why is it that the reputation is returned? Shouldn't the reputation be kept away as a penalty for an unpopular question or answer?

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    $\begingroup$ Both kinds of reputation adjustments are a result of treating your deleted Questions "as if" they were never posted. $\endgroup$
    – hardmath
    Apr 25, 2017 at 14:54
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    $\begingroup$ You have mentioned removal of reputation from upvotes after deletion. There is an exception to this rule - if the post was visible at least for 60 days. (This is a rather rare situation - but if you are interested in that, you can probably find more details in the linked post, which further links to this post on meta.SE.) $\endgroup$ Apr 26, 2017 at 5:02
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    $\begingroup$ and the negitive pulicity of this makes me want to self delete this myself!! $\endgroup$ May 2, 2017 at 20:18
  • $\begingroup$ and the negitive pulicity of this makes me want to self delete this myself!! $\endgroup$ May 2, 2017 at 20:18

2 Answers 2

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We're kind of forgiving at Stack Exchange. If you make a mistake and it gets undone (either by you, or by other people deleting the post), you'll get your reputation back. Isn't that wonderful?

Note that the deleted post does count against an eventual question/answer ban. If you have too many downvoted posts (deleted or not), you will eventually not be able to post anymore, until you improve your old posts and manage to get upvotes for them. (Upvoted posts will compensate downvoted posts; the exact details of the algorithm remain secret.)

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The gamification philosophy is to reward people who act the way you want and discourage actions of the type you don't want.

Here are two major benefits of returning the reputation:

  • Returning the reputation encourages people to self-delete bad posts
  • The potential for permanent reputation loss discourages people who would have written adequate or good posts
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