I'll explain myself fuller and the following questions are all related to the title (I think!).
On my personal page I can see +8 for an answer I gave, but if I go to the OP's question page I see a zero. Now, I understand that people can change their minds, prefer a different answer and all that, but why the +8 points? I went to the help page and read this:
You gain reputation when: question is voted up: +5 answer is voted up: +10 answer is marked “accepted”: +15 (+2 to acceptor)
I can't do the sum. One up-vote = 5 what about the remaining 3 points? So I thought perhaps for a down-vote you lose fewer points but this is not so.
All users start with one reputation point, and reputation can never drop below 1. Accepting your own answer does not gain you any reputation. If a user reverses a vote, the corresponding reputation loss or gain will be reversed as well. Vote reversal as a result of voting fraud will also return lost or gained reputation.
So, how many people believed that my answer was acceptable and then changed their minds or did (number) other users disagree and effectively wiped out the "upvotes"? Or is it a combination of the two? I'm tempted to think it is the latter.
And what if, for hypothesis sake, 5 people expressed their opinion that an answer met the criteria (I'm not saying that mine met the criteria or standard requested) of being a "good" answer but then other users expressed their disagreement and outnumbered them. Who is to say the "down-votes" were right compared to the "up-votes"? And would it not be fairer to show at least the number of up-votes and down-votes on the question page? Many a time I have seen answers which I thought were better than reasonable and yet see only one up-vote, could that have been or is the reason?
I realize my writing is not the greatest, and perhaps it is not clear what it is I want explained. So to summarise:
Why does it say on my personal page there are 8 up-votes ( EDIT: 8 points not up-votes) when there are none on the actual answer?
Have I understood what the 8+ sign means?
How did I get the 8+?
Have I lost "reputation points"? But it doesn't look like it, (I don't keep tabs on my "score").
(Related to my question but not directly concerning me) If an answer receives many up-votes (for example more than 5) but is then outnumbered, shouldn't that be also displayed on the answer page?