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Can anyone let me know why an upvote on an answer would yield +4 reputation, rather than the usual +10?

This seems to have occurred for one of my answers.

I am not concerned about it, I was just wondering.

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    Mathematical me calculates that a combination of 1 upvote and 3 downvotes on an answer yields a score of +10 - (2 × 3) = 10 - 6 = +4 However you need to reach a certain number of reputation points in order to view the number of upvotes and downvotes against an answer. Meanwhile the software would notify us about the points earned from individual votes, but when a few votes are cast together the notification tends to present a computed figure such as +4.
    – English Student
    Jun 23, 2017 at 18:26
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    @EnglishStudent In the reputation event display in the profile, would it indicate a downvote as a separate event?
    – Eliot G York
    Jun 23, 2017 at 18:28
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    Usually each vote whether an upvote (+10) or a downvote (-2) is presented as a separate event: however when 2 or more votes are cast close together in time by multiple users, the system tends to notify these together, often without being explicit about the downvotes, but the sum of the votes as notified +8, +6, +4, etc helps us to understand how many downvotes offset the 10 points earned by one upvote.
    – English Student
    Jun 23, 2017 at 18:45
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    Please note that the votes thus reported as a combined score need not come from the same answer: the 3 downvotes in that -4 did not come from your linked 'vacuous' answer which (I am happy to report) has so far earned 8 upvotes and no downvotes.
    – English Student
    Jun 23, 2017 at 18:52
  • Have you reached your daily cap? I show that answer as having 8 upvotes and 0 downvotes. The only reason I can think of is that you've already hit your daily cap.
    – Hank
    Jun 23, 2017 at 19:18
  • @Hank can you share the information for the daily cap? I am not familiar with it.
    – Eliot G York
    Jun 23, 2017 at 19:21
  • You can only receive 200 rep daily from upvotes. I am on my phone so I can't send a link to the full explanation. But let's say you're at 196 and you get 8 upvotes, you will only get +4 until the day resets.
    – Hank
    Jun 23, 2017 at 19:22
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    I have reached the daily cap! I just received the medal. Thank you!
    – Eliot G York
    Jun 23, 2017 at 19:24
  • @Hank thank you for the explanation
    – Eliot G York
    Jun 23, 2017 at 19:30
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    Congratulations! Many happy returns of this "problem"!
    – ab2
    Jun 23, 2017 at 19:37

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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Congratulations!

You have hit the daily reputation cap (200, that is).

You can earn a maximum of 200 reputation per day from any combination of the activities below. Bounty awards, accepted answers, and association bonuses are not subject to the daily reputation limit.

Read more: What is reputation? How do I earn (and lose) it?

Now you can get these badges:

  • Mortarboard- Earn at least 200 reputation (the daily maximum) in a single day.
  • Epic - Earn 200 daily reputation 50 times.
  • Legendary - Earn 200 daily reputation 150 times.
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The other situation that can result is unusual score changes is when an content that you've downvoted on gets deleted, or a user who has downvoted your content gets removed. As far as I can tell, there is no way to suss out the details of these actions, they just get rolled up into other score changes.

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As @Hank noted, this occurred upon reaching the daily cap. I must have had 4 points remaining when the last upvote occurred. Thank you.

Link to reputation page

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    Reaching 200 daily cap and losing a few more points for that reason was recently considered an honour by one of my friends here at ELU!
    – English Student
    Jun 23, 2017 at 19:31

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