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I recently deleted a question about ext3/block tunables because I answered it myself and figured it had an obvious answer. Then I noticed that my reputation went down five points as a result. I was just wondering why this was the case.

It would seem like we would want people to remove unnecessary questions to improve the signal-to-noise ratio on searches. At the very least I was penalized for doing what amounts to proactive housecleaning.

Not to say I was going to take a vacation to Maui with my fake reputation points, just kind of unusual behavior from where I sit.

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Not unusual at all really. Presumably, someone had up voted your question which gave you 5 points. When a post is deleted (be it a question or an answer), you loose any reputation you had gained from that post. So, when you deleted your own question, you lost any reputation associated with it.

As for housecleaning, yes removing crap is a good thing but I don't really see what is so bad about that question. If you really want to be a Good User©, post an answer explaining your findings instead of deleting.

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  • Ah yeah, now that I think about it, I did have an upvote. The question was "noise" in my opinion because block level limitations ought to be moot if the filesystem sets a lower limit. I just didn't think the problem through so I thought I'd save people the trouble of reading it thinking they were going to get help on a problem.
    – Bratchley
    Jan 8, 2015 at 15:06
  • @Bratchley yes, you did have an upvote (I checked). As for whether it's noise or not, that's really up to you. Since you were stumped, however briefly, by this, others might be also and they might benefit from your question if you post an answer to it. That will also get you some rep. It's completely up to you but I see no reason to delete unless you really want to.
    – terdon on strike Mod
    Jan 8, 2015 at 15:18

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