tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Reputation fluctuation)

Steve Huntsman comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6755)

2010-07-08T03:58:19-07:00

@Pete--Reputation is not only fungible, but also somewhat liquid. It can be exchanged for time and expertise, which are also worth money (quite a bit, in fact).

I suspect that if a researcher came to me and said "I'd like to ask this (reasonable) question on MO but I don't have any rep, can you do it and offer a 500 point bounty?" that I could extract a favor or beer or even cash in exchange. And in such a situation (admittedly unlikely for me, but probably less so for those of us physically at universities) I would even accept the first two of these commodities in good faith.

Pete L. Clark comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6754)

2010-07-08T01:07:49-07:00

@VP: The following is meant to be a message of solidarity and friendly advice. If you find it striking you in any other way, please ignore it.

Two points:

1) I am inclined to agree that this completely autonomous, nearly prohibitively difficult to track, "suspicious vote detector" algorithm is functionally equivalent to a bug in the system. If it's a feature, it's a feature that nearly all of us on MO disagree with in its current form and would like to see changed. Anton has requested changes in the SVD and his request has received support but as yet no clear administrative response. In my reckoning, we are building up a good-sized queue of features that none of us seem to want. This is something to be fixed in the long term, but it's not going to be easy, so it's best not to get too worked up about these relatively minor issues.

2) Do remember that reputation can be converted to cold, hard cash at the rate of 0 cents per point. In other words, it's not a commodity in any hard-nosed economic sense. Most of the value it has is in the way it playfully, but addictively, encourages us to participate more and better. Earning reputation on MO is supposed to be fun. Losing reputation for no apparent reason is not much fun (it's happened to me too, on a slightly smaller scale); trying to exhaustively track down exactly where it went sounds like even less fun to me. With equal or less effort, one could just as well earn it back. Most people here are relatively generous with our commodity: if you post a few good (as usual) answers to questions, probably some people who have followed this thread will pitch in and toss a little extra reputation in your direction.

VP comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6753)

2010-07-08T00:19:34-07:00

Thank you, Scott! I don't think that any further action is necessary at this point. Let us leave it at that, although, for the record, I have compelling evidence that fluctuations are not due to "points beyond cap", because the "reputation" had been higher prior to that.

Scott Morrison comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6748)

2010-07-07T18:34:32-07:00

It is technically possible for Anton to look at votes on your answers to deleted questions, using the complete database dump, but I would strongly discourage him from bothering to do this! It's a lot of work for not much.

One thing to remember is that if you hit the reputation cap one day, but then "suspicious votes" to you were deleted, it won't retroactively give you the points that were beyond the cap.

Scott Morrison comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6747)

2010-07-07T18:30:37-07:00

I just triggered a recalc, and your reputation total didn't change.

VP comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6740)

2010-07-07T14:30:53-07:00

I've only ever hit a reputation cap once, and 200 points from that day that caused it have been removed, presumably by the suspicious vote detector. But in addition to that, 98 more points disappeared that had been there before (I have a tab open with an old score that I can use to compare the score). I redid the reputation graph calculation and it appears that I made an arithmetical error the first time (off by 100, duh!). So perhaps, as Anton suggested, some votes from deleted questions that add up to 98 are responsible. Is there a way to see which questions got deleted and how many points did they take away? I don't quite understand what rep recalculation does, but if it restores the correct total, can you, please, run it for me?

Scott Morrison comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6738)

2010-07-07T10:04:54-07:00

@VP, I don't think it's either A, B, or C. My guess had been that the suspicious vote detector had been at play. This isn't a bug -- as Anton points out there's a "feature request" to change the behaviour of the system to leave an audit trail. As you can see it's not B, and it's certainly not C. Does the reputation cap appear to explain what you've observed?

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6736)

2010-07-07T07:33:17-07:00

@VP: In addition to hitting the rep cap, there are a few other things that can cause discrepancies. For example, if one of your posts is deleted, you're supposed to lose any reputation gain (or loss) from it, but it requires a rep recalculation. If you suspect this is the case, you can ask a moderator to trigger a rep recalc on your account.

The suspicious vote pattern detector will only automatically delete votes that are really suspicious. It's hard to analyse because the votes are completely removed from the database. See this feature request of mine, which requests that there be an audit trail to make it easier to figure out what has happened.

Andy Putman comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6731)

2010-07-06T23:41:24-07:00

@VP : I have no idea whether or not this applies to you, but I once added up my own score like you did and got something that didn't agree with my listed score. After corresponding with a moderator, I discovered that I had exceeded the reputation cap on a few days, and thus didn't get points for some upvotes.

VP comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6730)

2010-07-06T23:02:44-07:00

I am sorry, Scott, but I am not content with "it's hard to analyse" response. This event really compromised my view of the integrity of the system. I have spent a considerable time analyzing, without moderator tools, and I have ascertained that there is a discrepancy of at least 80, but most likely, 98 points between (a) the sum of points for questions and answers (available through the reputation graph), minus my negative votes and (b) the "reputation" as displayed by the system. Can you, please, expand your response and explain whether this is (A) a known bug in the system that cannot be fixed; (B) something that you consider not worthwhile your moderator time responding to; or (C) the result of deliberate tinkering with my account on someone's part?

Scott Morrison comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6725)

2010-07-06T20:29:40-07:00

Nearly always this is the "suspicious vote detector" doing its thing/running amok. It's hard to analyse, however.

Yemon Choi comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6716)

2010-07-06T19:59:20-07:00

Off topic, but

"Isn't it ironic that robots are punishing a human for not convincing them that he is human enough?"

struck me as amusing given many Canadians' views on their Prime Minister's right-ish wing leanings...

VP comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6715)

2010-07-06T19:55:10-07:00

Thanks to everyone for your responses. A burst in upvoting may be part of explanation: I did get 200 points recently in small, unmarked +10 installments from an unknown admirer (this is no longer visible directly in the account info, but still evidenced by the "mortarboard" badge timestamped 1d). However, it still doesn't explain the whole thing: no posts turned to CW (and from what I understand, this wouldn't retroactively affect the "reputation" count) and the "reputation" rolled back to the level more than 3 days old, so there is a question of missing 98 more points: note also that it's not divisible by 5, hence it cannot be explained solely by rollbacks upvotes or accepted answers. I couldn't be absolutely certain, but I think that some recent upvotes I saw have disappeared from the history, but others definitely have not (and in my experience, changing the vote after a day or so usually doesn't work).

I don't think this is directly relevant, but yesterday I wasn't able to submit an answer, because the captcha word never loaded, even with multiple reloads (poor internet connection...). Isn't it ironic that robots are punishing a human for not convincing them that he is human enough?

Yemon Choi comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6702)

2010-07-06T19:06:18-07:00

My recollection is that a spike in upvoting for a particular individual can sometimes trigger a flag, presumably set in case there is collusion between two users to form a mutual aggrandisement pact. This is certainly something Anton can check, but I don't recall if the moderators are also able to.

José Figueroa comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6701)

2010-07-06T19:02:49-07:00

This happened to me a few days ago (see discussion started by Andrew Stacey called something like "Recount for Jose". I lost about 500+ points overnight. The explanation given was rather vague ("the software", basically), but I decided to leave it at that.

Yemon Choi comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6699)

2010-07-06T18:55:15-07:00

I think there have been incidents where the site software automatically reverts a sudden burst of upvoting. This has happened to me once.

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6695)

2010-07-06T18:33:24-07:00

There doesn't seem to be an MO user named VP. Can you provide your MO username so Anton or somebody else can see what's wrong?

Harald Hanche-Olsen comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6694)

2010-07-06T18:27:43-07:00

I suspect that only Anton can find out what really happened. A possible explanation, assuming it's not a software glitch, is that someone who has previously given you lots of votes suddenly has taken a disliking to you and gone and reverted those upvotes. Another possibility is that a few of your posts with high vote counts have been edited so much that they turned community wiki. I suspect you will lose the associated reputation when (if) reputation gets recalculated, but I am not sure.

VP comments on "Reputation fluctuation" (6693)

2010-07-06T18:05:50-07:00

It appears that between yesterday and today, 298 points inexplicably have disappeared from my "reputation" (gained 15, for a combined loss of 283). I can't seem to glean much from various account tools (recent activity, graph, etc). Has anyone else experienced similar phenomenon or knows an explanation?