What are the reasons for you to lose "likes"?

I perceived that with some frequency the number of "likes" I have go down

As I think that would be a rare situation people going to old comments to remove their likes...
I assume that there are other reason for this to happen.

What I think that could happen:
- When a comment is deleted you lose the likes from it (in special if the Trade/Topic is completely deleted)
- When the Trade is converted to Historic you lose the likes from it
(if this is true, would probably be the main reason for me to lose "likes")
- When a user is deleted/banned you lose the likes from him.
- Likes expires after a time
- There are a limited number of likes for each user (when you surpass it, your oldest like is removed - youtube worked like that in an old time...)

Actually not sure what (if anything) makes you lose likes from a technical perspective. Perhaps @Teebling can provide some Insight on that.

Just from a personal point of view though, there's a very real chance folks actively unlike a post again as they either change their mind or notice they never meant to like it to begin with and just hit the button by accident. That wouldn't account for "50 up, 35 down" and such but if you're talking about occasionally losing a couple to a handful of likes, that may well be it.

Schnorki wrote: 3 weeks ago

Just from a personal point of view though, there's a very real chance folks actively unlike a post again as they either change their mind or notice they never meant to like it to begin with

There is one more valid reason: your post was correct long ago and received a like, but it's no longer correct (for example about Druid not being able to summon all the beasts simultaneously, which was changed in 2.4), so someone has taken the like away.

From a technical perspective (on my thoughts), would make sense "likes" go away when the Trade is converted to Historic.

From what I understand the purpose of convert a Trade to Historic is to completely erase most of the data of a Trade (what would include the Likes) or else they could just "freeze" the Trade and still let us access its comments

In special, from yesterday to today I perceived that I lost 1 like (when I refresh an open tab) and coincidently 1 trade of mine had become Historic

fredkid wrote: 2 weeks ago

From a technical perspective (on my thoughts), would make sense "likes" go away when the Trade is converted to Historic.

This is more than likely the reason why you are losing likes. When a post is deleted, the likes go away. A trade post is effectively deleted 3 days after it has been 'marked sold', meaning all the likes exchanged within it are removed as well.

Knappogue wrote: 2 weeks ago

fredkid wrote: 2 weeks ago

From a technical perspective (on my thoughts), would make sense "likes" go away when the Trade is converted to Historic.

This is more than likely the reason why you are losing likes. When a post is deleted, the likes go away. A trade post is effectively deleted 3 days after it has been 'marked sold', meaning all the likes exchanged within it are removed as well.

^ It's this.

Just to let you know, your “Likes given” status may also decrease when Trades become Historic.