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I suddenly saw that I am 20 points short, and the reputation page says that a user was removed. I am now left to wonder which posts suffered from this drop.

Is it possible to add some sort of way of knowing which posts were affected by the user's removal? Maybe limit the number of posts (otherwise the removal of an active user would cause an overload to the page...)

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    $\begingroup$ I downvoted because I disagree that this is a good proposal. To implement this would make votes less anonymous. $\endgroup$
    – Willie Wong
    Mar 26, 2012 at 8:19
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    $\begingroup$ @Willie: It's like revealing something on someone's secret doing after he died, so to speak. The user has deleted themselves from the system. The votes are gone. "In death a member of Project Mayhem has a name. His name was Robert Paulson." $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Mar 26, 2012 at 8:22
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    $\begingroup$ and I maintain that revealing someone's secret after he died is still not okay. Also, there have been instances of "resurrections" (I know the team doesn't look favourably on it, but sometimes if you beg hard enough...) $\endgroup$
    – Willie Wong
    Mar 26, 2012 at 8:34
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    $\begingroup$ @Willie, well... note that I didn't ask to know who the user was. Just what were the posts which got de-voted... $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Mar 26, 2012 at 9:02
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    $\begingroup$ Only a few users are deleted per day. While it does take some effort and a bit of (human) memory, it is not at all impossible to "connect the dots". $\endgroup$
    – Willie Wong
    Mar 26, 2012 at 9:11
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    $\begingroup$ "His name was Robert Paulson." $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Mar 26, 2012 at 12:18
  • $\begingroup$ I am totally amused by your conversation. (I think my comment is not encouraged -- as it doesn't help this post in any way -- but I just can't stop myself) $\endgroup$
    – Vee Hua Zhi
    Nov 6, 2018 at 13:02
  • $\begingroup$ I will just mention that the answers on How can I find posts related to lost reputation due to a “user was removed” message? (Meta Stack Exchange) and also Can I know where I lost my reputation? (on this meta) contain some suggestions how to find such posts (or at least the recent ones). $\endgroup$
    – Martin Sleziak
    Apr 2, 2019 at 9:05

2 Answers 2

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I think this is a bad idea, for two main reasons.

  1. The privacy of the anonymous voting can be compromised. Even if an user is effectively "dead and buried" in this forum, I would still prefer to maintain their privacy in their voting preferences. A little bit of detective work is all that's required to connect the dots between date of deletion of the account and the date of the vote removals.

  2. Why exactly is this information useful to you? For users' active downvotes and upvotes, knowing which posts were voted up or down can help the poster tune his/her writing to be better in the future, and also indicate to the poster possible mistakes made in past postings. But there really is nothing you, as a user, can do (in terms of amending your posts) to prevent or counteract the effect of a user-account deletion.

The key is your framing of your question: you said that a post "suffered" from this drop. I firstly disagree with that choice of word, and even supposing I do agree, considering that there's nothing you can do to ameliorate said suffering, what's the point of knowing this information?

Given that I don't see any benefit for having this information handy, and I can see a possible minus in terms of privacy (albeit rather small and unlikely) should this suggestion be implemented, I must disagree with the feature request (at least until I am convinced that the benefits outweighs the flaws).

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Is it possible to add some sort of way of knowing which posts were affected by the user's removal?

I've described a procedure for this on Meta Stack Exchange. It uses the Stack Exchange API but does not require programming.

  1. Go to this page
  2. Change the site with the [edit] link (default is Stack Overflow)
  3. Click the 'Get Token' button so that the API knows it's you
  4. After authenticating, click the 'Run' button

enter image description here

Scroll down to the user_deleted events, you'll find clickable post IDs which will take you to the involved posts:

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ Unfortunately useless to me, since getting a token always takes me to SO and asks that I create an account there... You wouldn't have any solution for that, would you? $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Jul 8, 2020 at 9:09
  • $\begingroup$ Heh, didn't realize that. I know no workaround, alas... $\endgroup$
    – Glorfindel
    Jul 8, 2020 at 9:14
  • $\begingroup$ @AsafKaragila you could create an account, perform this procedure and delete the account. Not sure if that works for you? $\endgroup$
    – Glorfindel
    Jul 11, 2020 at 14:47
  • $\begingroup$ Well, I rather not. $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Jul 11, 2020 at 15:20
  • $\begingroup$ @RyanG yes, user removal does not influence the answer being accepted or not. This has always been the case, I don't know why. $\endgroup$
    – Glorfindel
    Aug 16, 2021 at 7:12
  • $\begingroup$ @RyanG No, they are not reversed either. $\endgroup$
    – Glorfindel
    Aug 16, 2021 at 7:14
  • $\begingroup$ @RyanG well - sometimes the votes are preserved even if the question or answer is deleted. It's all in the FAQs on Meta Stack Exchange, e.g. meta.stackexchange.com/q/5221/295232 $\endgroup$
    – Glorfindel
    Aug 16, 2021 at 7:21

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