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Something very strange occurred today, where I got a notification of a -2 reputation reduction from a question I did not have anything to do with.

Screenshot

I did not downvote the question or any answer.

I have never seen this question before today.

The link to the question at hand is here and the user it points to is definitely not me.

Can anyone explain what is going on?

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  • 2
    Did you check the revision history of the linked answer? Commented Jan 24, 2025 at 18:29
  • stackoverflow.com/revisions/55395286/2 to be specific. Commented Jan 24, 2025 at 18:35
  • 2
    Although your edit was valid, the post owner was wrong to rollback, and I have just rolledback to your edit. Commented Jan 24, 2025 at 18:36
  • 4
    Voting to reopen because this was not caused by the same behavior as the linked question, and it seems worthy of attention. Commented Jan 24, 2025 at 19:03
  • Can someone edit the title to specify that it was -2 rep? It seems relevant. Commented Jan 25, 2025 at 12:26
  • 1
    Why is that a relevant thing to include in the title, @Anerdw? It's mentioned in the question. It's well understood that one needs to read a question in order to get all the relevant information. Commented Jan 25, 2025 at 12:43
  • @CodyGray Searchability. -2 rep really only happens when a suggested edit gets reverted; people in this situation might want that information from the get-go. Commented Jan 25, 2025 at 16:39
  • Bodies of questions are just as searchable as titles, @Anerdw. However, numbers are hard to search for, and that's equally true when they're in titles as in bodies. What we would want searchers to find would be this FAQ. Looking in the FAQ is probably a better idea for anyone who isn't familiar with the terminology likely to have been used on Meta. Commented Jan 28, 2025 at 9:27

1 Answer 1

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You made a suggested edit to that answer in March 2019, for which you received 2 reputation after it was approved. Earlier today, the OP of the answer overrode the edit's approval and rolled it back (incorrectly, in my opinion), meaning you lost the 2 reputation from the approval. Given that we're talking about a minor edit you made almost six years ago, I can't really blame you for forgetting you'd made it.

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    I'm surprised someone can choose to rollback an edit after 6 years and cause someone to do lose reputation. Feels like there should be a point at which where the reputation is left in situ. (In this case, the original recision existed for 2 hours while the edited revision almost 6 years.) Commented Jan 24, 2025 at 18:51
  • Why is that surprising? The owner of a post, like moderators, has the ability to override the approval of an edit, so long as there weren't any intervening edits made. There is no statute of limitations on that. I don't see why there should be one. If the edit was incorrect, then just because it was missed for 6 years doesn't seem like a good reason to lock in the reputation to me. Now, this may be a bit of a different case, if the edit was good and the override was incorrect, but that's an inherent problem with allowing post owners to override edits and wouldn't be solved by locking in rep. Commented Jan 25, 2025 at 10:39

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