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It's my understanding that the reputation on my profile gets desynched from my "real" reputation for a variety of reasons. It's also my understanding that the reputation shown on the rep audit (http://stackoverflow.com/reputation) is the "real" reputation.

So why can't the system update my reputation to the one on the audit every time I open it? I mean, it's not like it's going to use a lot of resources, since it's already got the total there - just one more UPDATE query and it should be done.

This would sure be a lot better than having to bother moderators to do it for you.

EDIT: This is basically as per this post.

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It's a good idea, but a button somewhere would be nice, just so you know you asked for the recalc. I think just auto-recalculating your reputation when you view the audit violates the principle of least surprise. –  Robert Harvey Aug 31 '10 at 22:24
See also Waffles' answer at Trigger a rep recalc any time a post is deleted/undeleted or question migrated. –  Arjan Mar 21 '11 at 21:12
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2 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

I upvoted it but these are just workarounds and there is a much better solution, which is also relatively easy to implement: reputation should never become out of sync.

How difficult can it possibly be to remove the reputation from upvotes/etc when a question gets migrated or deleted, for example?

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The problem is that it makes people unhappy if their reputation goes down, and making people unhappy is bad for the site. Therefore deletions/... don't really show up in your reputation and I guess it will stay that way. –  sth Sep 1 '10 at 4:49
@sth: Except they do show up in your reputation, whenever you get recalculated. –  Jon Skeet Sep 1 '10 at 6:09
@Jon: But there only once was a recalculation (for the average user) and I don't think there will come any more soon. So once every few years there might come a day when you loose some reputation. That's much easier to bear than if it happens over and over again in smaller doses. –  sth Sep 1 '10 at 8:31
As mentioned above 'principle of least surprise'. Reputation changes should be traceable. Deletions are not. –  devinb Sep 1 '10 at 14:54
@devinb: according to your absurd reasoning then if I upvote a person and then remove the vote, that person should retain the rep until a "rep recalc", when they'll mysteriously lose a bunch of rep. This is much less surprising. –  Andreas Bonini Sep 1 '10 at 15:34
@Kop Votes are locked in after 5 minutes. Unless I edit my question, and then they can edit their votes. This leaves a relatively limited number of places where votes can be changed around. Furthermore, vote changes on old questions are rare. Also, which part of my reasoning is absurd. My reasoning is sound, the outcome might be absurd. –  devinb Sep 1 '10 at 15:54
Changing votes is just as rare as questions being deleted. –  Andreas Bonini Sep 1 '10 at 16:32
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People care very strongly about their reputations. The reputations are, in fact, the main reason why most people are answering questions. They'll answer a few questions to start, but day to day, it's because they want that number to keep ticking upward.

Every time that number changes there is an accessible log. Whenever my reputation changes I can immediately go into my recent changes for the last day and see why. Reputation Audits don't do that. Your reputation changes without any record. Deletions, vote-pattern detectors, they fall into that.

If my reputation goes down by 100 all at once, I'm going to want to know why, and there simply isn't a record of it.

Even the rep-audit doesn't help with that, because it contains the record of everything that adds up to your current rep, but it will never show the things that were removed.

This is why recalcs are by buy-in only. They will affect your reputation in unknown and unknowable ways.

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The point being? –  NullUserException อ_อ Sep 1 '10 at 15:05
If I understand the OP correctly, accessing the requested feature means knowing that your reputation is going to change. I don't think he's asking for more accounting on why rep went away. –  Tim Post Sep 1 '10 at 15:14
@Null The last sentence explains why I do not want your feature request. I don't want the act of viewing my reputation to automatically change it. –  devinb Sep 1 '10 at 15:22
Note that also just a normal votes that someone takes back is also not traceable. And did you mean "recalcs are by buy-in only"? –  sth Sep 1 '10 at 15:27
@sth Thanks for pointing that out :D –  devinb Sep 1 '10 at 15:52
@sth vote retractions can only happen within 5 minutes of the vote, or if you edit your post, so there are relatively few occasions where they would happen. –  devinb Sep 1 '10 at 16:00
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