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On SO somebody decided to upvote multiple of my answers in a row (or so it seems). Consequently, the nightly script removed the serial upvotes.
According to the FAQ, that should bring back the status quo ante. Quoting

Reversals trigger a reputation recalculation.

Whenever serial voting gets reversed, all days involved in the serial voting will be recalculated as if the serial votes had never happened, and any reputation you might have lost due to those serial votes hitting the reputation cap will be given to you at that time. Serial voters will not prevent you from gaining reputation that you deserve.

Bold emphasis mine.
Related answers would also indicate as much:

But all of that contrasts with what I see. Voting reversal does not seem to work like that. In the case at hand, I never got any reputation from the serial upvotes to begin with, since I was past rep cap for the day. (There's more weird stuff going on, I never got past 195). The algorithm still deducted reputation the next day to give me a negative score for ... what exactly?

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FAQ, previous answers and the voting correction algorithm, it doesn't add up. Or I am missing something?

The relevant part from https://stackoverflow.com/reputation (as per comments):

-- 2015-05-07 rep +150  = 148006    
 2   8229000 (10)
 2  15514334 (10)
 2  11751905 (10)
 2  16701719 (10)
 2   8016917 (10)
 2   7945958 (10)
 2   7630564 (10)
 2  30125448 (10)
 2  30127396 (10)
 2  16451457 (10)
 2   7431468 (10)
 2  30127396 (10)
-- 2015-05-08 rep +120  = 148126    
 1  30125448 (15)
 3  30134755 (-2)
 2  18405706 (10)
 2  11919677 (10)
 2   8014694 (10)
 2  30134755 (10)
 2  13259085 (10)
 2   7774879 (10)
 2   7630564 (10)
 2  10560761 (10)
-- 2015-05-09 rep +93   = 148219

marked as duplicate by animuson May 10 '15 at 17:02


  • Never try to audit your reputation via the profile rep feed. It is confusing at best and usually inaccurate due to situations like serial voting and vote reverseal. Instead look at the /reputation page of the site you are interested in (so for Stack Overflow it would be stackoverflow.com/reputation). That is a text feed of your reputation as it is counted in your total rep. You won't see the reversed votes there, so you should be able to see what you got credit for and what you didn't – psubsee2003 May 10 '15 at 10:09
  • I think the point he's trying to make - if the 80 votes were taken off yesterday, on the day he overcapped massively from the upvotes, he wouldn't have been punished with -80 rep on the second day. Technically, in this instance, he's lost 80 rep, since 80 was ignored through overvoting the day before and then removed the second day as part of the voting reversal - he never earned any rep from those votes but he lost rep the following day as a result of those votes. That, and the fact that he obviously rep capped the day before, yet only got 195 rep, should show there is an issue... – Flyk May 10 '15 at 10:38
  • @Flyk the point is that given the info in the rep feed in the profile, it is impossible to determine exactly what transpired at this point. That's why he needs to go to the reputation page and see exactly what he got credit for. Maybe there are 8 votes that were part of the serial voting and did get reversed – psubsee2003 May 10 '15 at 11:13
  • @psubsee2003 no, I think you're missing the point entirely. Let's use actual numbers: On May 8th Erwin got 38 upvotes, 2 unvotes, 1 accept. That's 375 reputation - the cap is 200. If the 80 rep was to be removed, it should have been removed from the 375, making his rep for the day 295, capped at 200 - instead of 195. On May 9th, he shouldn't have had -80, because that was taken off the day before, meaning instead of losing -2 rep, he'd have gained 78 rep. You can't tell me that this is "correct" because quite clearly 78 + 5 rep has vanished during the process of the cleanup – Flyk May 10 '15 at 11:18
  • By doing the calculation "the next day", you're ignoring the possibility of overcapping the day before. Let's use a super extreme example: if you earn 1000 rep on day 1 (capped at 200), and then 800 of that rep is rolled back as serial upvotes, on day 2, you start at -800 rep and have to clear that before you earn anything, even though you never earned that 800 rep in the first place because it all disappeared into overcap – Flyk May 10 '15 at 11:21
  • @Flyk: I think psubsee2003's point is that the representation in the profile may be misleading / broken completely and the correction the next day is just to get in sync with actual reputation. That would make it a profile bug then ... – Erwin Brandstetter May 10 '15 at 11:27
  • "Still a bug"... – Flyk May 10 '15 at 11:29
  • @Flyk that's entirely my point. The -80 is not removed from today. It is removed from yesterday. The votes never existed. It has no bearing on the rep cap for today. What you are seeing in the profile is just a representation of voting events as they occurred so you can see why you rep changed, not as they actually exist in the database. I don't know exactly when, but that mess actually gets cleaned up and the rep feed in your profile actually looks more accurate. But for several days after it occurs, it will be like that. – psubsee2003 May 10 '15 at 11:31
  • @psubsee2003 if that was correct, Erwin should be able to browse to /reptuation and see 200 reputation gain on the 8th of May, even though his profile shows 195, and 78 rep gain on the 9th of May, even though his profile shows -2? This should be pretty easy to check if this is actually the case... Erwin? – Flyk May 10 '15 at 11:32
  • @Flyk I dind't say this would be immediate. It would be a few days. – psubsee2003 May 10 '15 at 11:34
  • I added the relevant part from /reputation ... – Erwin Brandstetter May 10 '15 at 11:34
  • @psubsee2003 why would it be "a few days" if the serial upvote script runs daily?? – Flyk May 10 '15 at 11:37
  • @Flyk cleaning up to be "accurate" is going to be a few days, I think. but for the immediate future, it is going to be inaccurate because of the serial voting reversal. – psubsee2003 May 10 '15 at 11:41
  • @Flyk maybe I am wrong on the "cleanup" part. I could have sworn I had need it go away after a period of time. But that is besides the point - the reputation feed in the profile is designed to allow you to see why and when your rep changed. It is not intended to be an accurate representation of your reputation. – psubsee2003 May 10 '15 at 11:44
  • 2
    The reputation history is displaying everything correctly, it's just incredibly confusing how it gets displayed. – animuson May 10 '15 at 17:02

So, there are a couple of things that are really going on here, but first an foremost, the reputation tab in your profile is not designed or intended to be an accurate representation of your reputation as it exists in the database. It was designed to show you when and why your reputation changed on specific days.

What you are seeing in your reputation tab is that your rep changed by +195 2 days ago (20 upvotes, 1 unupvote, 1 accept, and -10 for a removed user). And then yesterday, your rep changed by -2. You had lost 80 rep due to serial voting reversal, got 8 upvotes and 1 downvote, and 1 unaccept and 1 (re)accept.

But what actually happened to your reputation is a lot different

  • The -10 for the removed user is counted on the day that the vote was actually made, so you didn't actually lose 10 rep 2 days ago, you lost it when the vote was recorded.
  • You received 20 upvotes that (initially) counted plus 14 more after you were past the rep cap. 22 of those 34 were later reversed (14 that didn't count because of the rep cap, and 8 of the ones you initially got credit for)
  • Your accepted answer 2 days ago was unaccepted yesterday (and reaccepted then). This means that the +15 you got 2 days ago didn't count anymore.

Add all of that up and you get 12 upvotes that counted = +120 rep 2 days ago (5/8). And then you had 1 accept and 8 upvotes and 1 downvote yesterday (5/9) and you end up with +93. Both of which match your /reputation page.

Ultimately this messy situation is and not a bug. The profile reputation, as mentioned previously, is supposed to show you why your rep changed on specific days and not when it actually counted. This is how it works for any kind of reversal of the score

  • Un-upvotes / Un-downvotes show up on the day the "un-vote" happened, but are treated as if the vote didn't exist (so the actual loss is recorded on the day the original vote happened)
  • Reversal due to post deletion show up on the day the deletion happened but are treated as if the post didn't exist (so the actual losses are recorded on the day all of the original votes happened, which could be spread over multiple days)
  • Reversals due to user deletion (whether user asked to be deleted or was deleted by the team for other reasons) are treated the same. You see it on your profile on the day the user was deleted
  • Reversls due to serial voting are treated the same. You actually lose the rep on the day the serial voting occured, but your profile shows it on the day the votes were reversed.

Could you imagine the confusion if the votes simply disappear or the voting reversals show up on the day they actually counted. You could sign in, see your rep drop by 200 and not know why. You would actually have to comb through your entire profile to figure out why you lost those points. So to deal with this issue, you are shown the reversal in your profile on the day the reversal occurred, but the rep is still actually lost on the day the vote/accept originally occurred.

  • That makes a lot of sense - more than the representation in the profile did so far. – Erwin Brandstetter May 10 '15 at 19:14
  • @ErwinBrandstetter as the duplicate question mentions, this is an on-going issue due the confusion it causes. The way the profile does it now is better than just making the page mirror the actual reputation for the reasons i mentioned. But there are probably better ways of highlighting it so behavior is more understood. I've added a bounty to get it some more attention. – psubsee2003 May 10 '15 at 22:50

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