I said "reputation". The complainer said simply "depth" but was talking about how downvotes had damaged their nodes. Perhaps I haven't been around PerlMonks long enough to remember when downvoting caused a thread's reply depth to drop below the default threshold?

Even if the complainer meant " reply depth", then that just becomes a bizarre aside that belies their claim that these nodes were so "useful" and doesn't detract from my point that the one user downvoting their old nodes did no damage to the usefulness of their nodes (mostly the only damage was to the complainer's XP).