I lost 10 reputation today. Our newest moderator, Juraj lost 510, Majenko lost 170. Who was the "deleted" user who was responsible?

Question

When a "sock puppet account" up-votes other users, they should at least have the common courtesy to ask the "up-voted user" whether or not they want the reputation, before they start up-voting them.

I have said publicly that the reputation on the Stack Exchange Networks has absolutely no value, unless collecting fake internet points stimulates that part of your brain which craves it.

Please do not vote for my answers. I help people because I want to, not for the reputation. Last time I checked, Stack Exchange Reputation is NOT accepted at my local gas station, grocery store, or anywhere else in Canada.

FWIW, you can go to each user's public profile page and filter by "reputation" to see who lost the most rep. Here's a good place to start: Arduino Users.

Answer 1

It is impossible for us to know who the deleted user was. But "user was removed" is itself a very loose term.

It may have been a user that was deleted by the system for voting abuse. In general though users are deleted by a manual action by us moderators (destroyed as a spammer, for example) or manual intervention by the community moderators (our bosses).

It is far more likely that the user decided to delete their own account. Maybe a "rage quit" (we've all been there and done that) or just reducing their online presence.

As Nick has noted, reputation is less about personal reward and more about the smooth running of the site. Having to earn privileges through good questions and answers means that only people that have earned some level of trust gain access to more advanced features - which helps reduce abuse by new (or "sock puppet") users.

Voting for questions and answers is not about rewarding the users (the bounty system is for that, which you may notice is seldom, if ever, used), but about grading the quality of content. Once you have earned the amount of reputation you require to unlock the facilities you want there is little point to reputation from a personal perspective, but from the site's point of view the voting that creates that reputation is invaluable.

If people don't vote for your answers (because you told them not to) your answers won't be seen as good answers on the website, since others will have higher votes. Even if your answer is by far the best answer, if it's not been voted up that answer is of less worth (and less likely to be read) than a poorer answer.

In short: voting is the core principle these sites work on. Reputation is merely a side effect and a way of controlling new users' actions.

Answer 2

A "sock puppet" account is one which is literally controlled by the same person, like a puppet on your hand. So for example, if I made a second account called "John Gammon" (using a slightly different email address) and then whenever I made a post I got my "John Gammon" account to upvote it, that would be a sock puppet vote. Clearly that would be unethical, as no person, other than myself, was voting for it.

In that case, I would hardly need to get permission from myself to do the upvote, as it was me doing it.

However if a different person, Joe Bloggs, just happens to think I am wonderful and vote all my posts up, then this isn't a sock puppet vote. That is just an admirer. The Stack Exchange algorithm for detecting sock puppet votes might not be able to distinguish between the two, however.

Please do not vote for my answers. I help people because I want to, not for the reputation

That is certainly admirable to want to help people, however the whole idea behind Stack Exchange is that good answers are voted up, and bad ones voted down. Asking people to not vote up your answers, if they are good, defeats that mechanism.

Next, you'll be asking people to not accept your answers, because that also gives you reputation. However accepting answers indicates that your answer solves their problem.

The up-vote is not so much to give you reputation (that is a side-effect) but to mark the answer as good and useful.

Who was the “deleted” user who was responsible?

I don't know the answer to that. Not even moderators can find that out. I suggest, though, that new users don't just go around voting hundreds of posts up willy-nilly. It might look to "the algorithm" that they are sock puppet votes.

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You tagged this question "grow-up-se-rep-is-worthless". It isn't worthless — it is the basis of the entire system. Without reputation, you may as well have the to-and-fro of a forum. With a forum, it is hard to see which are the good answers and which are the rubbish ones. The reputation system (and the voting) is specifically designed to let third parties know whether they should trust one answer over another one.