Quote Originally Posted by Maltz View Post
Another way to encourage people to give thanks is to have a "thanks received" and "thanks given" counter for each member. This way we are all "encouraged" to give thanks in order not to appear ungrateful and anti-social.
That is a bad concept and the "Give Thanks" system was deliberately implemented with such a function turned off. The volunteers who help manage the Org do post on other forums and do have experiences with their operations. All of them stated when they idea came up that they didn't want a counter visible.

Why?
Because this is not a popularity contest and no one wanted such a function which facilitated that aspect. These usually breed resentment or "gamey tactics" to artificially inflate (and on some forums, deflate) scores of users which makes the whole practical implementation feel tacky and meaningless.

However, people do like recognition for their work, and sometimes people read a post or topic and go "I think that post is rather good." but they don't want to feel they are spamming up the thread with their reply. In return, people who made such post might feel that no one appreciated it.

Conclusion:
We decided to do as a halfway system. Allow people to "Give Thanks" to a contribution without intruding and allow that other user to feel appreciated for their contribution. There is no real "gain" or "point scoring" involved, it is simply warm felt gratitude and appreciation.