Up until yesterday, I had 8,120 reputation; now my profile reports 3,991 2,128. It makes me feel like crying and I hate that too.

Is this the real reputation count logic of SO? I hate this. You don't even care to notify or something else? Why would they take or increase reputation when they know there is something wrong? It hurts a lot in end when you see such a huge loss.

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    Possible duplicate of What happened to my reputation? by the same user. – Dori Jan 15 '11 at 7:04
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    @Dori Well, this is obviously a separate incident, although it looks like it's probably for the same reason – Michael Mrozek Jan 15 '11 at 7:06
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    @Michael - oh, it's definitely a separate incident—but (imo) it looks as though the problems, symptoms, and resulting responses are identical. Cue the "Doing the same thing and expecting different results," etc. – Dori Jan 15 '11 at 7:10
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    Aside from anything else, how is 8120-3991 a 5K drop? It's a drop of 4129 - that's some impressive rounding up... – Jon Skeet Jan 15 '11 at 8:42
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    Cheer up Hansmukh, it's just reputation(SO reputation i.e.)! – abel Jan 15 '11 at 10:26
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    Just wondering about voting patterns: may I ask why you downvoted a question which you answered yourself, and then revoked that downvote some days later, while even asking for your answer to be accepted only 5 minutes after posting your answer? – Arjan Jan 15 '11 at 14:21
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    +1 to the fraud guy, while he was insincere the question led to some great discussion. – Mark Rogers Jan 15 '11 at 19:14
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    It's sad how someone can be compelled to cry over a loss of rep points, makes me want to cry also. – going Jan 19 '11 at 3:58
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    Shouldn't we invent a badge for dropping >1k in reputation in a day? Burst Bubble comes to mind – sehe Jul 4 '11 at 14:23
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    Don't bother about the reputation points. Why not become an extraordinary expert instead of wasting time on points? Spend lots of time using deliberate practice to learn lots of challenging, difficult things and later on solve cutting-edge problems. Forget the rep, get the mastery/knowledge. Keyword:Stop wasting your time and get to business! calnewport.com/blog/2012/03/28/… – user194867 Feb 5 '13 at 1:45
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    @sehe Sounds good, I'd say something more like "Piñata" to consider those who award over 1k rep in bounties. – Celius Stingher Jan 21 '20 at 19:11
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    @CeliusStingher that just made me realize I have awarded more bounties than I earned since a while. >1k rep in a day is a steep goal though. But I did once nearly reach that even without any bountying :) – sehe Jan 21 '20 at 22:39
  • Just read it, I'm glad for the happy ending! – Celius Stingher Jan 21 '20 at 22:52

Are you sure you want to discuss this in public?

I guess you do, since this is the second incident. Anyway, there were some really egregious sockpuppets and voting patterns here, and a lot of it.

Some examples:

  • users who say they are from "NY" and "Chicago, IL" -- when all their IPs geolocate halfway across the planet and remarkably near you.
  • users who have low rep (just above the 100/125 required to upvote) and no profile info, but have remarkably consistent cross-voting (and cross-accept) patterns with you, and also share many of the same IPs as you.

etc, etc, etc. Please desist from this sort of behavior or your account will be placed in timed suspension.

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    Vote fraud and he gets to keep all the badges earned? :( – moinudin Jan 15 '11 at 11:24
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    @marcog good point, this is so egregious I cleared all his badges too (he'll re-earn the ones that he still has the votes for) – Jeff Atwood Jan 15 '11 at 18:50
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    I shouldn't have deleted my earlier comment but what of the bounties awarded by the "community"? That's another 175 worth of undeserved reputation bringing it down to a 6k drop. – Jeff Mercado Jan 16 '11 at 5:57
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    @jeff how are the bounties undeserved? They were awarded by valid users to valid answers. – Jeff Atwood Jan 16 '11 at 6:13
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    @Jeff: Considering the net vote count on those answers are now zeros, I figured the votes came from the puppets giving him the partial bounty that he probably didn't deserve. There are other answers there that would have been awarded if they weren't one-upped by him. (e.g., John) – Jeff Mercado Jan 16 '11 at 6:17
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    He got a gold badge out of this, Unsung Hero. Bahahahaha. – Uphill Luge Jan 16 '11 at 7:13
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    What happens with public IP addresses? IE, classmates when a teacher/prof tells you to sign up for stack overflow for tips. – puretppc Jan 13 '14 at 20:49

Based on the Google-cached version of your profile, the number of upvotes on your answers plummeted (your top ten answers at the time had a total sum score of 115; now those same answers add up to 38). Most likely the vote fraud script detected suspicious activity and removed a bunch of the upvotes on your answers. That triggers an automatic rep recalc, so you lose all the rep you'd gained from those upvotes. If it's a mistake you should e-mail team@stackoverflow.com about it, but 5000 rep worth of upvotes is kind of suspicious

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