A.J.

So, it could be a few things:
 
1. We just updated to a new version of our upstream forum software. While there isn't a report of this being an issue, they could've messed up notifications.
 
2. It could be a system/database issue.  To address that possibility I just ran database maintenance and rebooted the server.  I didn't see anything that pointed to corruption, but better safe than sorry.
 
My hope is that maintenance will magically cure whatever it was that caused this, but most likely we'll never know why this happened unless we find out it's a bug with the newest upstream forum software.  Right now this will get added to the list of unsolved mysteries like the Bermuda Triangle, D.B. Cooper, Area 51, and why people like songs that are utter crap.

I'm a bit unsure of what went wrong.  I did a quick unpublish/republish on 11 and 12 and both magically showed up in the list.  There isn't enough data to support a conclusion at this time.

I'm not saying it wasn't broke at some point in the past, but it doesn't appear to be broke right now.  I just tested with a story and a chapter and it worked flawlessly.  It updates about every 5 minutes so if you go to a chapter of your story, hit refresh 20 times, and then wait 5-10 minutes you should see the increase show up.
 
Regarding later chapters having higher numbers than previous chapters, that's usually people finding the site from the Internet and opening links not realizing it's not the first chapter.  Sometimes site activity is higher and if your story post coincides with that period of time, or if you post and there is considerable time before the next author posts a story/chapter, you can see a far greater response because of that.  As they say, out of sight, out of mind.

There probably won't be any immediate answers on this issue.  It's complex and it's going to take time.

@Carlos Hazday I've fixed the statistics display bug you reported above.

@Lacuna I'd be glad to help you fix your story.  Please PM me about it.  I can even reset dates if necessary.
 
As for use of the post-dating system, I suggest people NOT use it until I can work with the programmer to get it fixed.

@Reader1810 @northie Have these issues cleared up for either of you? 

@Carlos Hazday I think this is one of the side effects of me restoring the old code from last night before the programmer updated it.  The activity stream is probably screwed up for all story related content from last night until about 30 minutes ago.  I'm not sure I can fix that.  Hopefully we won't have to do any more prior code restores in the future.

The issue was created by a new Stories upgrade overnight.  We've contacted the programmer.  I'm trying to see if I can patch it without him, but it's a large complex issue that's been introduced and I don't wish to make it worse.

I know many of you are confused by your reputation counts dropping.  I'm going to give a short explanation and then a longer one for those that like to watch me prattle on about technical things.
 
Short answer:
 
An author left our site yesterday.  They wanted to leave for personal reasons not related to this site.  Multiple admins made an attempt to convince this author to stay and/or leave the account as-is.  We tried to reason with them that they could simply stop logging into the site, which would give them the option of coming back, but in the end they decided to leave the site and reduce their internet usage to a bare minimum.  When they left we were forced to delete content which triggered automatic reputation rebuilds on all the members they interacted with.
 
Long answer:
 
In the past, when content was deleted there were no cascading effects to reputation levels.  Let me explain why.  The old Invision forum software would simply orphan the reputation gained from deleted items in the reputation database.  Therefore, you still had reputation from any post, blog entry, story or comment on the site even if it was deleted.  The new software is different in so many ways.  Invision's new forum software is really smart about cleaning up after itself.  So, over the years we've removed forum posts, blogs, and stories for a bunch of different reasons.  This creates an issue as the system has removed the orphaned reputation data from the database.  Now, with the newest 4.2.x forum software, when content is deleted it adjusts the reputation of those connected with it.  So, deleting a forum post will remove the reputation you gained in that forum post.  Deleting a story where the author liked one of your comments will remove that reputation from your account as well.  Except how the system does it isn't by simply removing one point for each reputation instance, but by rebuilding the totals for affected members from scratch.  This is why many of you saw such huge drops in reputation.  We didn't intend for anyone to lose reputation they had gained, but the system now has built-in control over that unless we find a way around it.  We are considering rebuilding all member reputation from scratch so that all members are on an even playing field, but we've not done so yet.