@ThomasBrowning As far as I can tell, the possible sanctions include suspensions and account deletion / destruction, but not loss of points or restricting the right to comment without general suspension.

Maybe I am wrong -- but wouldn't it actually solve most of the problem if one would just remove the misleading / controversial term 'reputation', and refer to the points just as 'points' -- and leave everything else as it is?

While it's not my area, the formulation "How could you define ..." seems perhaps a little vague to me(?)

As to your last sentence -- I'd rather doubt that a problem which can conveniently be solved in an answer box on MO (i.e. on something like one page) would be a good "primary problem" for someone's PhD thesis ... .

To my knowledge, questions which have an upvoted answer cannot be deleted unilaterally. And in general it is also not a good idea to delete too many questions, in order not to risk a question ban. While the exact rules are not public, a rough rule of thumb is that a question which has been downvoted, closed and deleted is much worse than a question with which only one of these has happened, and still a bit worse than one with which two of these things have happened.

@NoahSnyder I think "politics relevant to mathematicians" is far more than just issues of gender and "race" (the last word put in quotes as there are no different biological races of humans -- so "race" in itself may be seen as a racist term). -- For example, is it not relevant to mathematicians how universities and research are funded, which regulations there are on types of employment contracts mathematicians can get at universities, whether people studying mathematics need to pay tuition fees, and so on?

@NoahSnyder The "issues related to gender and race in mathematics" are only one aspect of politics (though maybe one which is given particular value in the US ... ).

I'd like to second @Lucia, and I think the real rationale behind deleting the comment was that it goes against the currently fashionable idea to introduce policies to specifically promote particular groups of people, and this also seems to be the reason why the deletion sparks such an amount of controversy.