Are these fields redundant?

Question

Why do we have total_upvotes + total_downvotes as well as score?

Doesn't

score = total_upvotes - total_downvotes

Is this always true? If so, isn't it redundant?

Answer 1

Comments have only score. So this way comments,answers and questions can have the same field name. Of course a score and downvote_count would still decrease redundancy.

btw. the fact that the API has total_upvotes and total_downvotes makes the fact that you need reputation to see those stats on the normal pages weird. (are there more of these kinds of stuff eg. where the API has some functionalty you usually need some reputation to have?)

Answer 2

Flags does not included in score in real site, so we need both.

(When someone flag it, community user put a temporary downvote for 2 days)

Answer 3

At this phase, this is technically correct. Note that changes in the main site could break this assumption over the lifetime of v1 of the API (not to imply any such changes are in the pipeline - or even being discussed - at this time).

More significantly, I feel we're too close to a "RC" of the API to remove fields; so these are staying.