We have discussed in the temple the thanks button and whether it brings any real value to the forums. The spark that started the conversation was the number of news posts with no actual replies just lots of hitting the “thanks” button.
The consensus of the admin and moderators is that the button has stopped a lot of people simply saying “thank you”. It kind of stops the replies where people say thank you for the news, or thanks for the heads up about something or other. The thanks button was originally implented on TPR without any consultations. We had an arguement over negative reputation givers and I knee jerkingly installed the thanks mod. On looking back I now think this was not the right thing to do. The discussion over this in the temple revealed that many of the mod team are still posting thank you and giving out reputation for exceptional posts, and not using thethank you button, or even feeling a bit spam by posting thanks and hitting the button.
My opinion is that it should be removed and a couple of reasons why.
[ol][li]It is far nicer to receive a post of “thanks for the news” than seeing a little number go up. Means a lot more in my book.
[/li][li]Since I installed the mod, there have been many, many updates to the mod. Some considered security risks and some usability. This takes time to do, and in my view reducing the posts and kind of killing off the potential conversations - especially in some of the seti news posts.[/ol]
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Now I know a lot of people do use the thanks button, so rather than just remove it because the mods want to, time for a poll. My vote as described above is that is gets removed. Poll will run for 7days.
I do use it, and i think i would probably say ‘thanks’ a bit less often if i had to type a message. but i personally would rather get a proper ‘thankyou’ than what is virtually an automatic response, so im with endre on this - zap the thankyou button.
Knee jerk reaction to this thread was keep it but on consideration i see what your saying and agree that it kills alot of posting in news threads and kills alot of debate, even if only to agree with a post.
im being different i actually quite like it coz sometimes you just want a bit of advice and you dont need to give a rep point if you are just saying thanx i dont have any problems with it at all
I always assumed that it was implemented to cut out the posts which were solely for the purposes of thanking and that it was done to save space (it appears I was wrong). I’ll leave my vote out for now as its nice to be thanked in both ways (although a post is a little nicer). If I were to vote, I would probably say keep it as i’m more likely to thank people with a click of a button. I would only normally post if I have a point to make as well as saying thanks or i’m in a spamming mood. Should the button be removed though, it wont be sorely missed.
edit/ After thought and seeing other opinions on the matter, i vote keep it.
I’ve always felt that ‘Thank you’ posts for the news are a bit meaningless , a bit like answering your wifes Do love me ? question for the fifth time this week , it doesn’t actually mean very much and is just routine , I mean , what else are you going to say , a button forfills the function to show appreciation just right , I just wish I had one for the wife
when I use it, especially for the news posts, I think it serves the same as me typing “thanks”…if I have more to say on the post, then I will, but I feel it removes the 5 pages of “thanks” that have nothing else to contribute. How many different ways are there to say “thanks for the news”? I completely agree with Mortlake. Sometimes I do both, but if there is a point I want to make or something to add, then I will still post, regardless if I used the Thanks button or not. I say keep it.
it’s always struck me as being rather naff. I’m not too keen on the rep points system either, but the thanks button is in a different naffness league. Good forums don’t need these gimmicks.
Posts that deal with team stats and daily updates is where you see a lot of these IMO. The people that take the time to type these up always have my thanks. In posts where say one person helping another solve a technical issue a thank you message is in order as opposed to just hitting thanks. I agree with 2blue where he says ‘good forums don’t need these gimmicks’
