Let's cut to the chase: and the like button? I really enjoy to score with like / thanks what I like (man, this phrase in portuguese before the translation made more sense!). This shows the value you give for the efforts of those who commented, helped, shared. But thanks is different from like. And sometimes I feel that give a thanks for something that is only funny it is not very accurate. If thanks is also used for things like a tool that someone has developed for months, and I used for lets say jokes, it seems to me that depreciates the value of the thanks button. But at the same time, how can we not enjoy what our fellow post here? Okay, maybe it's just me. If so, I'll come back to that corner there, dark, almost a hole in which I hide. Or even under that rock that I live! cheers
@ofernandofilo: I miss the "like" button too. And I agree with what you say. The "like" button has its' place and the "Thanks" button has -its'- place. @MODS: Please forgive me if I'm speaking out of place. AFAIK: The likes and thanks system has been a burden on MDL, and has caused database problems in the past. Likes have been disabled, and as far as I know, the only reason Thanks are still enabled is because the thanks button is needed for some posts (to show links)
The old version of the "Thanks" plugin/addon/extension simply doesn't offer a Like button. However, it puts much less load onto the system as the newer version, which even relied on third-party servers (ajax.googleapis.com).
The idea of a thanks plugin comes originally from abe1. It’s been an open source project as Vbulletin plugin. The entire community helped to improve it.... I had installed it in the year 2010 @MDL. Then commercial interests grew and dragon byte ‘took’ the idea, added more features and re-released it as paid version and a crippled free version. DragonByte is using a different table layout hence a table conversion was needed…. abe1 stopped development. I had been worried because of upcoming compatibility issues of the original plugin so I decided to go for DB advanced thanks/likes which offers more features and is still developed... So far so good…. Later we had to find out that its concept and how it is programmed is taxing the server a lot…and even worse the more thanks/likes a thread has got the more probable is it to run out of assigned RAM. Short: Dragonbyte borrowed an idea and realized it sloppily even as paid version. The loops to go through are proportional to the amount of thanks/likes. Some of our most liked threads already had stopped displaying. So we had to bite the bullet and Daz could convert anything back to the old one with less features and thanks only.
What is ideal and what is practicable are two different things, as demonstrated by the above account. I also frequent other boards, and the majority of them have neither a Thanks nor a Like button. Furthermore, one that had a Thanks button had to abandon it when it changed software. In conclusion, though not perfect, we are not all that badly off with what we have.