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I'm not sure if I did something wrong and I'm doing something even wronger posting this, but there is only one way to know.

I went to my profile a few minutes ago and I found that there was a "User was removed" update in it. At first I thought I had been banned for some reason, but apparently everything is in place except that and 5 negative reputation (Never mind that, I don't really care).

I want to know if that is a glitch or it's because something that I shouldn't have done. I can't think of anything that could have caused this, so I don't know exactly what happened.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Welcome to meta! Feel free to ask most anything about the site here. \$\endgroup\$
    – C. Ross
    May 2, 2014 at 23:32

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No, you're fine! Someone else had their account removed, at their request. All the votes they ever made were removed from RPG.SE, which means that everyone lost any reputation earned from the removed votes. I got −8 myself.

Your −5 was probably because they upvoted one of your questions once; removing that vote removed the +5 reputation their vote added to your account.

Update: this only now happens when the deleted user was found to have been involved in vote fraud. Votes from deleted users are now preserved most of the time, with vote removal reserved for cases where vote fraud has tainted the deleted account's voting record. Accordingly we now see these kinds of “User was removed” events much less often.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Oh that makes sense, thanks! \$\endgroup\$
    – user9869
    May 2, 2014 at 21:23
  • \$\begingroup\$ Is there any easy way (none of the ways I'm thinking of are easy!) to find out which questions and answers were affected by a user's removal? (I took a decent User was removed hit today and I'd like to know on what!) \$\endgroup\$
    – Hey I Can Chan
    Apr 20, 2017 at 22:13
  • \$\begingroup\$ @HeyICanChan There's no way that I'm aware of, even for a moderator. (It's not even possible to look up who it was. I am always so curious.) \$\endgroup\$
    – SevenSidedDie
    Apr 20, 2017 at 22:22
  • \$\begingroup\$ Bah! Who cares about the removed dude! I care about my stuff! :-) But, seriously, that's a shockingly severe lockdown on that privilege: that a mod can't even sigh (in sorrow or relief) at a user's removal. I'm again both bewildered and impressed by SE's policy of anonymity. Thanks for the comment. \$\endgroup\$
    – Hey I Can Chan
    Apr 20, 2017 at 22:29
  • \$\begingroup\$ @HeyICanChan It is fairly impressive. It's possible as a mod to stumble over who's gone if you notice one of their posts later and check the delete reason's attached name, but individual votes are always beyond our reach, even in cases of vote shenanigans (which we have good tools for detecting but still only statistically, still obfuscating the individual votes). It's very tightly locked down! \$\endgroup\$
    – SevenSidedDie
    Apr 20, 2017 at 22:57

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