upvoted after a down vote, but points are not reversed?

Question

I noticed from https://music.stackexchange.com/users/18447/mey?tab=reputation that my points are not reversed when a previously down voted answer gets upvoted. As far as i know, i would have got a +5 to replace the -2. Would greatly appreciate an action on this. Thanks☺

Answer 1

Well, that's a borderline bug. The problem is that your answer has become community-wiki inbetween, and when a post becomes cw, you don't lose the rep you gained so far, but you don't get any more reputation (the post is "community owned" now). Unfortunately, in your case it means that the -2 rep you lost wasn't gained back. Obviously, it wasn't a revised downvote, but rather an independent upvote (someone with enough rep to see this could verify it).

IMHO it would make sense to still count upvotes as counter-acting previous downvotes and vice versa, even after the post has been cwed, I mean, if the score gets closer to zero, the rep gain should be changed to reflect this.

Anyways, just remember this and you'll be fine: Rep is a non-significant number.

Answer 2

• Reputation gained from votes is not absolute, it is cumulative.
• Reputation changes only occur on questions and answers that are NOT community wiki.
• Upvotes on questions gain 5 reputation, upvotes on answers gain 10 reputation.

This means, if an answer had one downvote and two upvotes, the total reputation change will be +18. (-2 * 1 downvote + 10 * 2 upvotes)

Downvotes don't go away -- they will even become visible to you once you reach the Established User privilege.

However, in the case of the vote events referenced in your question, the upvote occurred on your post after you made it community wiki, so the upvote did not confer a reputation change. Making a post community wiki does not revert reputation changes conferred by downvotes that occurred prior.

Please try to consult the Help Center and Google for questions about core site functionality before coming to meta. We are happy to help, but this topic is exhaustively discussed in posts such as the following: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/269653/why-did-i-gain-lose-reputation-can-i-audit-my-reputation-history