Really? We're still using those? Truth told, I had forgotten about referrals. However, in order to even begin investigating why, we need more information.
This and That In truth, I think once upon a time we were going to have a contest, complete with coffee mugs and t-shirts at stake. I could be entirely mistaken, though. Referrals haven't been of any consequence, to my memory, since Dave was still in charge. I'm pretty sure it was his scheme. • • • Well, that's sort of the thing. I don't know who those were attached to. What if—and this is just a hypothetical proposition—two of the three were from the same person, and one of those identities was later slain as a sock puppet? I would suggest that in order for a referral to disappear, the status of the user ID to whom it was attached—i.e., the member who credited you for referral—changed drastically. It could be something as simple as an internal status assignment within a permanent ban. But not only do we need to figure out, in order to answer your question, how referrals work technically, we must also determine to whom that referral was attached. And that might be an obscure numerical value in a site backup archive. As such, I can't put a time estimate on getting an answer. Nor can I promise a functional answer; such database details are above my pay grade, so it depends on whether or not administrators find reason to go diving after an answer. And given that referrals are presently of absolutely no consequence, I cannot put any useful odds on whether or not you can convince them the issue is so important.
