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I just get -10 points of reputation flagged user was removed but there is no extra information about this event.

Could an admin or moderator detail: How and Why should a user be removed? What happens to questions they asked or answered when his/her account is removed? Why are p other users who had been interacting with them be punished?

Is there a difference between user was removed and user unregistered account? Was the deletion automatic or human-driven?

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2 Answers 2

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Users can request deletion (which is what happened here). Users are also forcefully deleted when they have no constructive contributions (spam) or are sockpuppets.

The posts are retained, but the votes are usually removed (there is some threshhold for vote retention, forgot what it was).

An unregistered account is simply an account that is not tied to any login and will disappear when the cookie expires.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for clarification, therefore I have lost an upvote tied to the user when he/she suppressed the account. $\endgroup$
    – jlandercy
    Commented Mar 22, 2014 at 7:59
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    $\begingroup$ I'd ask SE why the special deletion procedure was not used here, the impact on some users' reputation was quite large. $\endgroup$
    – Mad Scientist
    Commented Mar 22, 2014 at 12:55
  • $\begingroup$ The short answer there, @Mad, is that the "special" procedure is a rare exception that only happens when someone follows our standard deletion procedure. The user in question did not - he was apparently in quite a hurry to have his account removed. $\endgroup$
    – Shog9
    Commented Mar 22, 2014 at 20:41
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    $\begingroup$ @Shog9 I don't see why the actions of the user that requests deletion should play any role in this decision. The major thing this accomplishes is that it lets people rage-quit in a far more dramatic and disruptive way than otherwise possible. I understand that there are some large potential issues with always keeping the votes, but the current "special" procedure seems far too unreliable at the moment. $\endgroup$
    – Mad Scientist
    Commented Mar 22, 2014 at 20:46
  • $\begingroup$ It's a system that no one outside of my team even thinks about until it fails, so reliability judgements are pretty heavily biased toward "how much screaming have I heard lately?" It's a manual system that chews up entirely too much time from entirely too many people, so of course it's unreliable. It's gotten slightly better over time, but frankly there's a long, long way to go - and the only way you'll know when it's finally working right will be a new class of complaints, this time regarding impossibly obscure voting anomalies. $\endgroup$
    – Shog9
    Commented Mar 22, 2014 at 21:38
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I just get -10 points of reputation flagged user was removed but there is no extra information about this event.

That's almost as much as I lost ;)

My reputation showed -440!

When answers and comments of the user who left us are still here for good reason since they were pretty good, helpful and showed a lot of enthusiasm, why are his votes treated differently?

I question the sanity of this tretment and consider this a punch in the face of all contributors that actively participated in this site and spent their time to provide substantial answers.

Let's face it: Lately, most of the voting on answers wasn't done by the newcomers dumping endless cascades of do-my-homework questions that show an abysmal lack of understanding, paired with attitude but by those regulars that actively tried to turn this site to something better (that is seemingly was in the beginning).

The silent withdrawal of reputation for good answers makes me question whether this site does deserve good answers at all when it's apparently much easier to gain reputation for questions that exhibit laziness paired with dumbness and get upvoted by the the legion of dumb and lazy flying by.

Did I mention that I am angry? I am!

EDIT: Having blown off steam here some 5 hrs ago, I asked a related question concerning the reinstallment of the up- and downvotes on Meta.SO (if you want something done - DO IT!) and talked to some friendly fellows there. They mentioned that SE staff keeps an eye on the metas, including this one.

I am not willing to take back what I wrote about quality above, but I hope that SE staff will find a solution that satisfies all the good people on Chemistry.SE who devote their time and energy to provide scientifically correct and understandable answers here.

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    $\begingroup$ I do understand and agree with your point. Good answer deserve reputation no matter what happens to the voting user. $\endgroup$
    – jlandercy
    Commented Mar 22, 2014 at 9:25
  • $\begingroup$ My reputation went down by -145 because of this user deletion. I really think it's unfair towards the steady contributors to impose such a penalty. But this might have to be brought up on SE.meta, as it seems that it is a network-wide implementation? $\endgroup$
    – tschoppi
    Commented Mar 22, 2014 at 10:18
  • $\begingroup$ @tschoppi I saw that shortly after you had happily celebrated the 2k barrier, you were thrown back too. Congrats anyway! But you're right, it's a network-wide flaw of the system. $\endgroup$
    – Klaus-Dieter Warzecha
    Commented Mar 22, 2014 at 10:22
  • $\begingroup$ Yeah, it's really kind of a bummer. But I'll keep at it :) $\endgroup$
    – tschoppi
    Commented Mar 22, 2014 at 10:23
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    $\begingroup$ @tschoppi Ask for the missing element(s) between $\ce{Se}$ and $\ce{Te}$ to get a lot of attention and win some badges :D $\endgroup$
    – Klaus-Dieter Warzecha
    Commented Mar 22, 2014 at 10:33
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    $\begingroup$ @KlausWarzecha I'm sure that you've seen the response to your question and the comments above, so there is going to be some resolution to this. I think you've brought up some important points about quality, though, and I don't want them to get lost in the shuffle. We should all talk about this at some point. It goes without saying that we would be nowhere without the great participation that the active users have put in, present company included, so we appreciate it. $\endgroup$
    – jonsca Mod
    Commented Mar 23, 2014 at 1:56
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    $\begingroup$ @jonsca I hadn't seen the comments of MadScientist and Shog9 above until now but I had read Shog9's comment on my question on meta.SO that was migrated here and I'm fine with that. Seeing that the "incident" will apparently not have any demotivating effect once everything is sorted out, I'm confident that the users participating here will continue to deliver good answers (and questions) and sort out those of questionable quality. I'm relaxed, and to me it seems that the SE universe is responsive, and does work. $\endgroup$
    – Klaus-Dieter Warzecha
    Commented Mar 23, 2014 at 2:16
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    $\begingroup$ I think I found the user whose removal caused this: He is referred to as user95 now, isn't this correct? Well, it's really sad because he was a great user, great responses and questions, and apparently a large amount of votes. $\endgroup$
    – M.A.R.
    Commented Jan 27, 2015 at 20:00

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