Has deleted user been involved in voting fraud?

Question

I've lost 115 reputation points because the user who had cast votes to my questions and answers has been removed.

I can see it impacted also other users, losing even 400 points.

Reputation points are rewards for users contributions to this site and deleting points from my reputation discourages me from further contributions, unless the votes has been cast in an unfair way. I've read the site is prepared for such behaviors and thus votes of deleted users are not deleted unless the deleted user is or ever was involved in voting fraud.

Does it mean the deleted user was involved in voting fraud?

Answer 1

I'm one who lost 400 points. I see this as simply part of the way things work. When a user is deleted, votes they cast are removed. It's not common in this community that large numbers of votes are rolled back because of account deletions.

I don't know why the decision was made to roll back the votes of deleted users - that would be a question for the stack exchange mods or the stack exchange admins - but I can see potential reasons for it. One is that any user who has been removed for misconduct is likely to have also been misusing voting privileges even if their voting patterns don't meet the criteria for voting fraud.

I personally don't see losing reputation points because someone was removed as a deterrent to contributing. I see it as incentive to keep providing high-quality answers and continue to upvote good questions and answers. The more who contribute and vote, the less overall impact one removed user will have.