The reason for the fluctuation in your rep status was due to flagging and cleanup activities. Let me explain. - https://askubuntu.com/questions/611327/screenshots-taken-in-ubuntu-14-04-lts-are-not-opening-in-windows-7/611333#611333 You had 20 rep on this. Your answer was flagged as a duplicate of another answer. Indeed, another answer on the same question was similarly removed since it just repeated the same information. If you can substantially differentiate you answer from the others, we can reinstate it. Change it and flag and it can be undeleted. Where answers are identical, too brief or just verging on being a comment we also remove. In this situation you hit all three criteria. - https://askubuntu.com/questions/611319/restoring-old-boot-screen/611322#611322 You had 25 rep on this one. This one you answered saying the answer was given on another question. The flag said that the questions were identical - I agree. Thus, what you should have done in this situation is flag and/or comment that the question was a duplicate. We can then close the question as a duplicate. Your answer and the accepted vote score was removed to allow redirection to work. This is where someone searches for a question and stack exchange automatically redirects them to the correct answer. Conclusions. Don't be too down-hearted. Just remember to try to differentiate your answers from others. Explain fully - dont just give brief link only type or just answers that don't answer the who-what-why-where-when explanations. We all have been there at the beginning. "The rep will come"