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This is more of a general announcement, I guess, but today I happened to run a reputation recalc on my account (which one can do by going here), and I noticed that I lost 104 points. This is an unusual number (i.e. it's not a multiple of 5) and it's rather large, so I was a bit confused as to the possible reason. But after thinking and looking around for a bit, I noticed that a rather active user has deleted their account, and that the disappearence of their upvotes from the system is now starting to take effect. This has happened before; see this thread. So if you lost reputation recently (or notice a loss in the near future), this may be why; there is no automatic explanation, or even notification, of when a global reputation recalc is performed in the SO system, so I wanted to bring this up preemptively. This aspect of the reputation system is discussed here on meta.SO.

I've been advised to avoid mentioning who left in this thread. If you don't know, then I suppose it doesn't matter too much; a quick glance at the user list should be enough for most of our active users to see who is missing.

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    $\begingroup$ Tangentially related (I just noticed this): bounties awarded by deleted users remain. See here for an example as well as this thread on meta.SO for an explanation. $\endgroup$ – t.b. Aug 21 '11 at 16:16
  • $\begingroup$ A month or two ago I chanced upon the "trigger a manual reputation recalc" page that you link to. For reasons now unremembered to me I clicked the button before reading carefully what my reputation would be recalculated to be (as the page tells you, fairly enough!). The result is that I lost 500 reputation points, between 2 and 3 percent of my total reputation at the time.... $\endgroup$ – Pete L. Clark Aug 21 '11 at 20:59
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    $\begingroup$ ...I was pretty surprised by this at first and not entirely pleased...but I got over it. What had been lost certainly could be -- and was -- regained, given a little time. It is also my current understanding that this 500 rep was only on long term loan to me -- i.e., that at irregular but persistent intervals there will be global rep recalcs. (Is this still true?) It also made me realize that the way the SE platform keeps track of reputation is an art rather than a science, to the extent that the concept of "true rep" doesn't really seem to exist. As it turns out, I'm okay with that. $\endgroup$ – Pete L. Clark Aug 21 '11 at 21:05
  • $\begingroup$ I clicked your link and pushed the "trigger recalculation" button. Now my reputation indicated in this meta site is 8,675, while in the main site became 8,497. $\endgroup$ – Américo Tavares Aug 21 '11 at 21:08
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    $\begingroup$ @Américo: the reputation on meta and on the main site is not entirely synchronized. The latter depends on the former and is updated only a few times an hour. Check back a bit later and you'll see the reputation drop here as well. $\endgroup$ – t.b. Aug 21 '11 at 21:12
  • $\begingroup$ @Pete: done. Normally there's a delay and the rep on this meta site is lower or equal to the rep on the main site. My expectation is that my rep here will become 8,497 after that delay. $\endgroup$ – Américo Tavares Aug 21 '11 at 21:13
  • $\begingroup$ @Theo: Yes. It was not a surprise for me. $\endgroup$ – Américo Tavares Aug 21 '11 at 21:15
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    $\begingroup$ @Pete: I think I read somewhere that these recalculations happen about once a year. The only relevant link I could find is this one where it is said that they happen "periodically" (bold faced text after the second bullet list). $\endgroup$ – t.b. Aug 21 '11 at 21:24
  • $\begingroup$ It is confirmed. Now here my rep is 8,497 too. $\endgroup$ – Américo Tavares Aug 21 '11 at 21:35
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    $\begingroup$ I must be very lucky, or unfortunately inactive - I lost a mere 10 rep. $\endgroup$ – davidlowryduda♦ Aug 22 '11 at 8:03
  • $\begingroup$ I wonder why the deleted users did not fancy me. I haven't lost a single point... Perhaps it is my tendency to trigger recalcs every few days when I notice a drop on the reputation page... :-) $\endgroup$ – Asaf Karagila♦ Aug 22 '11 at 21:17
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    $\begingroup$ I lost 254 rep after clicking that button... whee! :D $\endgroup$ – J. M. is a poor mathematician Aug 23 '11 at 7:01

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