I look at my account reputation changes, and noticed several negative reputation changes, both citing 'User was removed'. Is this behavior documented/explained anywhere. I would appreciate some pointers.
Thanks
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
25
-
2$\begingroup$ I am tempted to vote this a duplicate of my feature request. $\endgroup$– Asaf Karagila ModMar 25, 2012 at 0:35
-
3$\begingroup$ @AsafKaragila Thanks for the pointer. I would still like to hear out a motivation for the current behavior. It does seem somewhat odd. Were these users removed because these were duplicate accounts by the same actual user ? I would like to know why I lost some 110 points. $\endgroup$– SashaMar 25, 2012 at 0:51
-
$\begingroup$ Had the same happen to me. Lost 25 points. $\endgroup$– TpofofnMar 25, 2012 at 0:58
-
$\begingroup$ I would guess that someone requested the account to be deleted. $\endgroup$– Asaf Karagila ModMar 25, 2012 at 1:12
-
1$\begingroup$ I looked through the moderation logs and the most recent user deletion appears to have been on March 20, and it was a fairly inactive user at that - probably not responsible for such a wide range of upvotes (I lost 25 points as well). Users that have upvoted must ask a moderator to delete their account for them. I'd support a feature request for listing the posts on which reputation was lost; maybe I'll add a feature request that moderators have the ability to see a record of recently deleted user accounts. $\endgroup$– Zev ChonolesMar 25, 2012 at 1:13
-
1$\begingroup$ @Bill: As I understand it, there are no more global rep recalcs. $\endgroup$– Zev ChonolesMar 25, 2012 at 4:07
-
2$\begingroup$ After all these comments, I still have no idea what "user was removed" means. Can someone explain that? $\endgroup$– Michael HardyMar 25, 2012 at 6:04
-
1$\begingroup$ @Michael: I'm fairly sure that it indicates that reputation was lost due to the deletion of an account (upvotes from a deleted account are removed, while acceptances are transferred to the Community user). $\endgroup$– Zev ChonolesMar 25, 2012 at 7:19
-
1$\begingroup$ @Zev Ah, yes, I remember reading that global recalcs were going away. So that implies the the new rep accounting changes still aren't robust, since it never explained where the rest of my rep was lost (or perhaps there are bugs). $\endgroup$– Bill DubuqueMar 25, 2012 at 17:55
-
4$\begingroup$ I noticed that my reputation increased by $90$ points yesterday because a user was deleted. What could that mean? $\endgroup$– bginsMar 25, 2012 at 22:03
-
1$\begingroup$ @bgins Probably the user had a lot of hatred on you and cast a lost of down-votes :) $\endgroup$– user17762Mar 25, 2012 at 22:53
-
2$\begingroup$ I lost 142. Is that a record? $\endgroup$– Gerry MyersonJun 12, 2012 at 6:16
-
1$\begingroup$ @Gerry: But I lost $312$ this way a day or two ago! $\endgroup$– Brian M. ScottDec 12, 2012 at 4:21
-
2$\begingroup$ @Brian, sorry, not impressed --- I lost 390 the day you lost 312. $\endgroup$– Gerry MyersonDec 12, 2012 at 6:45
-
1$\begingroup$ What do you have against question marks? $\endgroup$– JMCF125Feb 10, 2014 at 21:38
|
Show 10 more comments
1 Answer
$\begingroup$
$\endgroup$
6
Currently, when a user is deleted for whatever reason, all of his votes are deleted as well. The reputation other users gained from his upvotes is removed upon deletion. If you lost 110 reputation due to this, it means the deleted user had voted e.g. on 11 of your answers, and those votes were retracted upon deletion.
Users are deleted for various reasons, the main ones are that the users were created to circumvent the site rules (e.g. vote fraud or spamming) or that a user requests his account to be deleted.
The removal of the votes from deleted users has always been the case, but it wasn't obvious until recently. Only due to the recent changes in the reputation system do you get an explicit notice about the reputation you lost, before the changes it just looked like those upvotes never existed.
-
8$\begingroup$ The "explicit notice" doesn't tell you which of your questions or answers were affected. Can anything be done about that? $\endgroup$ Mar 25, 2012 at 15:02
-
10$\begingroup$ @MichaelHardy You'll have to ask SE to change that, but I strongly doubt they would show that information. It would significantly endanger or even abolish the anonymity of the votes, if you know who was deleted you would know how he voted on your posts. Information about votes is generally not exposed to other users. $\endgroup$– user9733Mar 25, 2012 at 15:05
-
$\begingroup$ @MichaelHardy The only thing I know of, which can be used to check which of the upvotes on your posts were removed, is to save listing of your reputation from time to time and then compare the files you get from there. $\endgroup$ Feb 10, 2014 at 10:31
-
3$\begingroup$ Why does anonymity of votes matter if the account is deleted. Additionally, since you're not told which user was deleted, all you know is that there is a user who was deleted who voted you up on x,y, and z. $\endgroup$ Apr 2, 2014 at 13:41
-
$\begingroup$ @MichaelHardy I have stumbled upon this: How can I find posts related to lost reputation due to a “user was removed” message? The accepted answer gives a way to find out which posts were affected (among the recent reputation changes). This is also explained on this meta: Is it possible to know which posts were affected by user removal? $\endgroup$ Aug 17, 2020 at 11:36
-
$\begingroup$ @MartinSleziak : Thank you. $\qquad$ $\endgroup$ Aug 17, 2020 at 18:59