Saying thanks: testing a new Reactions feature
We’ve been seeing people share their gratitude for the Stack Overflow community and its great answers on other social channels for years now. As it exists today, Stack Overflow doesn’t provide a way for users to just say “thank you” and show others appreciation for taking the time to answer their questions.
We’ve heard from our users that the inability to say “thank you” is frustrating—especially for new users who don’t have enough reputation to upvote or comment. Even when users gain these privileges, they still want to say “thanks.”
When it comes to answers, “thanks” appears in 1 of 6 comments. Although it’s less common on questions, the percentage of “thanks” comments have continued to slowly increase over the last few years.
Based on this data and user research, we’ve decided to test a simple, clutter-free way to say thanks—a reaction button on answers across Stack Overflow.
This is available to any registered user, regardless of reputation. On the left of the answer post, you’ll find a hands icon underneath the usual voting controls. By simply selecting the icon, you can share your thanks to the post-author. As reactions are added by users, a count of the reactions will appear below the icon.
We’re testing two versions of “thank you” hands (see below). We’ll be monitoring usage and other data throughout the test period and will use those results to inform how we may move forward with this experiment.
We hope that this test will have a positive impact on our community and reduce:
- Friction for users whose comments are deleted,
- The burden on moderators, and
- The time active users spend flagging/deleting comments
Getting into the spirit of the new reaction, all of us over here want to give a big thank you to all our users and visitors. Thank you for making Stack Overflow and the Stack Exchange sites such incredible communities and resources.
75 Comments
It is anonymous? Does it generate notification to receiver? The icon on right at least is too small for amount of detail, especially at 75% zoom which I always run, I was staring at it for 15 seconds thought it was a smudge on my screen until hover.
OK, no notification as per Learn more, and not anonymous via activity log.
Neither of those symbols look like “thanks” to me. What are the hands doing in these two symbols?
it is more like hi 5
One symbol shows “folded hands” – see https://emojipedia.org/folded-hands/
In Japan and India (and probably other places too), this gesture expresses gratitude.
The other symbol is of a person clapping, another widely recognised gesture of appreciation.
Agree, one of them appears to be the “pray” emoji which seems a bit culturally insensitive to say the least
What do you mean by “culturally insensitive”? Your comment appears to come from a place of ignorance.
The folded hands means different things in different places in the world. It does not mean praying to more than a billion people.
It isn’t accurate, I agree, but how is it culturally insensitive?
The symbol to the right means “don’t touch the cookies!” to me.
Will this feature ever be added to any other Stack Exchange communities?
What’s the point of having both a blog post, and an MSO post? External marketing?
Thanks 👏
Oh seriously? Why are we making it a social media website?
We’re just trying to give people the ability to show appreciation for the work someone did
I think it’s can make upvote will be more expensive.
This should be monitored to see if there’s a decrease in upvotes
I personally am all in favour of encouraging expressions of gratitude. I know I’ve been encouraged by thank you comments (which later got deleted because at the time the community considered them noise). One commenter was so grateful, he/she even proposed marriage in jest! I really enjoyed that one.
Personally, I think a “thank you” comment is still going to be more meaningful than just a reaction. I like initiatives like: https://saythanks.io/
How can we opt-out of this experiment?
How can we opt-out of those new annoying tooltips that cover the content of the questions and answers?
Did it obscure the answer for you? It didn’t for me.
It is very easy to control the display of web pages by removing elements you don’t like. Simply install an ad blocker plugin like AdBlock Plus or uBlock Origin. Then right-click or use the element picker feature to block that element from being shown.
Oh my God, why are developers so uptight, like you could swear you all have some sort of cold heart . How does adding this cover content of the question or answer
No he is right, the tooltip does obscure the answer, I noticed that myself.
It’s a technical/design problem that can probably be fixed. They were pretty clear that this is a test. Software quality improves over time.
– Stack Overflow doesn’t provide a way for users to just say “thank you”
It doesn’t?
I thought an upvote meant “thank you”.
What does an upvote mean then?
Ah. So have I been doing it wrong… do I need to row back on the upvoting?
Upvote means “this is high quality content”, as the community has so vehemently insisted for years now.
The blog post says pretty explicitly that users without voting privileges still want to say “thank you”.
If you read the article, you will learn that many users gave feedback indicating they were not happy at not being able to upvote answers WHEN THEY DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH REPUTATION TO DO SO. Only users with a certain level of reputation are able to upvote, but many more people without the reputation will want to say thank you when an answer helps them personally, but which may not be the “best” answer to answer the original question.
I am confused why non-logged in users can’t use the “thanks” reaction. Doesn’t that defeat the purpose somewhat?
So, would you say a “Thank you” is a vote for those who cannot vote?
Or are you saying it’s possible to write an answer which another user might be grateful for, but which isn’t high quality content?
Or are you saying it’s possible to consider an answer high quality content, but not be grateful for it?
All three can be true at certain times.
But the main point of the “thank you” reaction should be a vote for those who cannot vote. Well said.
Personally I can vote, but I can imagine using the thanks reaction for an answer that I liked for some reason, and wanted to show appreciation for, but which was not technically a good answer to the question.
I think it’s a great idea. Although it feels slightly uncomfortable mimicking Facebook and other social media sites, the fact is these features exist because people want them. Surely more communication can only be a good thing. We’ll get used to the changes soon enough.
This seems like a potential mistake. It’s already hard enough to get users to realize that the way to say thank you is to _accept_ the answer. By giving them another way to say thank you, we reduce still further the acceptance rate.
No he is right, the tooltip does obscure the answer, I noticed that myself.
It’s a technical/design problem that can probably be fixed. They were pretty clear that this is a test. Software quality improves over time.
I think, we should encourage “Thank you “-comments because they are good for the community, for the human beings behind the answers.
Such a comment is worthier than just clicking a button. It even sets a contrasts to the huge number of unfriendly comments.
This is not how the site works. It is harmful; it clutters the view. SO is about the content, not the people. The problem here is that you treat the site as a kind of personal interactions. This is not what it is. If this is what you want, Meta sites and the chat will be much more open for this. The way to say thanks, is to upvote, accept, and leave answers for others to come. A useful question is by itself a thanks to the repository/community.
https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/398367/feature-test-thank-you-reaction
“This is not how the site works.” is a nice example for the kind of unfriendly comments, I was referring to.
That is not an unfriendly comment.
It is a clinical and detached comment, which lands as “unfriendly” for many people.
UX design is about empathizing with the user, and the blog post states in no uncertain terms that new users are frustrated with the inability to communicate.
This is PRECISELY why you then have “rep hunters” — there is no way for them to communicate with other users unless they ask a question, and new users are unlikely to have unique (non-dup) questions.
Just to provide a voice in favor, I think this is a great idea. In company Slack channels, all of our developers make great use of the positive feedback reaction emojis like “thanks,” “hands raised,” and “pray” (which is closest to the hands-together thanks pictured here). These types of reactions send the positive vibes with the least amount of noise, and contrary to some other commenters here, I think they’re just as good if not better than “thanks”-type comments.
To the folks saying “isn’t an upvote the thanks,” I’d say no, an upvote is a signal to the wider world that “this is a good question to ask / this is a good answer to the question,” which directly helps people find the good answers. You can say an honest and genuine “thanks” for a bad answer, as in “thanks anyway” or “thank you for taking the time to try” but wrong or off-target answers need downvotes.
But why do I need to know that this was thanked often?
Does that mean it’s okay to supply irrelevant answers as long as I put in effort to write it? I might get thanks for it.
Will thanked answers be higher than non-thanked answers?
If it’s downvoted but thanked, will it not be grayed out/hidden?
If an answer has been moderated and formatted extensively, does a thank still make sense, and who am I thanking exactly? The numerous editors, or the OP answer?
The answer is No, No, No, No, probably No.
I prefer to receive up-vote. Shouldn’t I be rewarded for good answer?
Until now an up-vote has always meant (in the eyes of most users): “I feel positive about this answer.”
But now users will need to think qualitatively about HOW they feel positive about the answer.
Do they consider it a good answer and they’re grateful for it?
Or are they grateful for it, but they don’t consider it a good answer?
Or do they consider it a good answer, but they’re not grateful for it?
Perhaps we should look into further ways to granularise feeling positive about an answer?
We could have additional icons:
– Sunshine appearing from behind a cloud: “This changed the way I understand a concept.”
– Stopwatch: “This saved me loads of time.”
– Book: “This has inspired me to learn more about a new technology.”
– Mortarboard: “This is an excellent textbook explanation.”
I’m sure we could collectively brainstorm a couple of thousand more.
I actually like these!
Summing up some of the comments here with my own opinion:
– a given thank you should give some nudge to the responder – so they still feel the gratitude from far, like a plain “thank you” comment would, although a tad blander
– a thank-you should still warn some reputation – it might not be the BEST answer, but it still helped someone, so there should be some reward. Maybe a symbolic single point?
– many thank-you comments do clutter the view
– it might indeed create confusion and reduce answer acceptance rate, but that’s what why this research is being done 😛
Bonus: every once in a while I would like to say thanks to a low-votes answer, because it’s not to the point of the original question, but still somehow the searches led me to it and it helped me. It doesn’t warrant an upvote in that scenario.
It can be -in the eyes of people- easily replaced by upvote, which means reputation loss for people with good q/a.
I found this blog post by searching in google, but I was unable to find any information about the “thank you” reaction on stackoverflow itself or meta. So initially I did not understand the difference between an upvote and a thank you.
I like the sentiment, but I agree the implementation makes the UX more cluttered and confusing. Why not just make the upvote button send a thank you to the poster if the user is not logged in or does not have enough reputation? A message could tell the user that their appreciation has been registered (as opposed to sending an actual upvote), and you can still pop up the login dialog. Just make that currently “disallowed” click on the upvote means something instead of wasting it. You can safely ignore disallowed downvotes as not constructive.
Come on all you StackOverflow geeks! Let’s help them design the site in a way that makes sense by commenting here with some constructive ideas!
P.S. I don’t mind if you reply to this post with “thanks” 😉
P.P.S. It’s contrary to the spirit of a “thank you” to require the user to be logged in to give thanks. Don’t put barriers in the way of saying thank you!!
“Just make that currently “disallowed” click on the upvote mean something instead of wasting it.”
Agreed. I think this is a great idea which leads to better (and less confusing) UI and much smarter UX.
Keep the upvote button functional for non-logged-in visitors and low-rep users but change the functionality.
(ie. enable the upvote button’s power to increase according to who is using it).
Much better than introducing secondary buttons which have a functionality somewhat overlapping with the functionality of already-existing buttons.
Someone else in this thread said that sometimes an answer doesn’t warrant an upvote but you still might want to say thank you. Now I don’t know how common this is, but separating between an upvote for “this is high quality content”, and a thank you for “this is helpful” doesn’t seem like a bad idea.
In all cases, the findings of this research can only be helpful to StackOverflow and its community.
If User B wants to thank User A for their proposed solution, then I’d contend that User A’s proposed solution absolutely merits an upvote from User B.
If we’re going to have different buttons for different kinds of upvotes, there’s really no need to stop at two.
See my suggestions above for 4 more types of upvote. And we don’t need to stop at 5 buttons for different types of upvote, either. We could easily have another 20.
I think Will’s suggestion above is the very best – make the same upvote button function differently according to who is pressing it.
I know there is a lot of negativity on this feature. But I just want to say that I really think this is a nice long-overdue addition. My first few years of activity on StackOverflow was unregistered, and I was always frustrated at not being able to tell a poster that I appreciated their effort or that it had helped. I always wondered how many people I myself had reached. We do have a summary of views on our profile, but that doesn’t really tell you how many people your post may have really made some kind of a difference for. I’m also one of those very few contributors here who absolutely values and believes in the value of those users who will never register, much less vote or otherwise participate – the ones that just stop by to get the information they need and move on. In my opinion, they are the life-blood of this site. They are the reason a lot of us do what we do here.
Absolutely. The “thanks” reaction should 100% be available to non-logged in users.
So when accepting an answer, I will now click the accept checkbox, the upvote arrow and the clapping hands. Got it.
So now we have to click both Upvote and Thanks? WTF is the point of making us click twice?
There are two different upvote buttons so you can show that not only do you think the answer is a good answer but *also* that you’re grateful for it.
If you click the former but not the latter, everyone will know that, although you thought the answer was a good answer, you’ve as good as said you’re not grateful for it.
This says a lot about you and people will judge you as a result.
When more upvote buttons are introduced, you’ll have to click those too. If you don’t, you’ll be judged again.
The rule of thumb is: when there are two buttons, click twice. When there are twenty-four buttons, click twenty-four times.
Everyone will be watching to check that you don’t try to exercise any thought-independence on this.
I have personally used it on an older answer of a user to one question. The answer was good but outdated, so I didn’t want to upvote this answer instead I want to upvote a newer and now better answer in order to lead other users to the newer answer. Nevertheless, I also want to say “thank you” for the interesting answer.
This is stupid. Why not give people a way to actually say thanks without cluttering up the comments? A real thank you written by a human is much more touching and encouraging than a clapping icon with a counter on it. This article starts with a beautiful image of real thank you’s, and then you guys are gonna go and say that clicking a clap button is the same thing?
These kind of things are what dehumanizes the internet, they don’t make for better human connections. It’s also basically the exact same as the current upvote icon. A way to send a message to the author privately saying thanks seems much more touching. Or even a hidden “thank you’s” list that can be expanded on the question but that is hidden by default. Either of those would be better than this weird duplication of robotic thank you’s.
I think it’s too much. I understand the motivation behind it, but I think it’s one more thing in the UI/UX. What I would do instead:
– I would not show the icon “Thanks” there by default.
– If the user starts to type “thank(…)” I would suggest him to upvote and “say thanks”. If the users accept that, so then I’d show the icon of the hand “thanks”.
Something like that.
I was wondering why …
why lately people are not engaging as I’m used to in Upvotes/Checkmarks but rather, I noticed “teary-prayer-points” given to users who actually spent expertise and personal time (which in our field can get expensive pretty quickly) by selflessly providing answers to fellow developers. The fun **ingredient** which we all love is that small heads-up in the means of the beloved Upvote or that Light-gray-almost-invisible Tick that sometimes magically becomes green.
It’s a way for us to have fun, even secretly compete with other posted answers, watch which answer gets more votes, provide constructive criticism, edit, even thank, and learn in the process. It’s not a mistake those are called **Reputation Points**.
Seems you’re trying to ignore the psychology of Gamification which, got us in a nice way addicted, skyrocketed Stack Exchange in the early days, and we’re still here, more or less. Enjoying our free time. And in Codephilanthropy. Thank you Joel.
Regarding iconography, symbols
Experienced Multimedia, Graphic, Product Designers are expected to know iconography by heart in Electronic Communications or call it: E-pop-culture. Even Unicode.org placed “thanks” for the “Folded Hands” in last place https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/emoji-list.html `ask | folded hands | hand | please | pray | thanks`. In some cultures there’s a beautiful way to say thanks – that’s by joining your hands, in some cultures you even nod with your head or in others you take a deep bow of appreciation.
Clapping is a world-wide learned social behavior. Universal. Deaf people have the beautiful shake of palms, but we all understand clapping. (By the way, a clap with your fingers towards the palm is less painful.)
A/B testing, or rather A-Z testing for a world-wide platform can be also performed by geographic/cultural area. Don’t overuse A/B testing just for the sake of “we did used it”. Just like we try not to reinvent the wheel.
Experienced UI (User Interface) designers and Media Marketing specialists are also expected to know by hearth that every click, every single one, is expensive. **We’d All like to see that click land in the right place**.
Spend more time on what we all love.
Improve the introductory part for new users. Don’t stop there. Engage with new users. No. Even more.
“This user is a New Contributor” is as visible as the user reputation points.
Why are we seeing this messages, icons – at all? Are the students to blame or should the professor revise the introduction to some concepts?
By reading the other useful comments here I see warns of ignorification, not gamification. And specially lately – less Community *voice* and inclusion.
P.S: to join some of the comments above; during my years here on Stack Overflow I’ve been contacted by SO users privately on other channels. That one email, Skype, LinkedIn, whatever, saying “Thanks for helping me on StackOverflow” meant and still means a lot more than seeing a Clap or thousands Folded Hands.
Wikipedia has no “Thanks”? Than don’t forget that Wikipedia has also no Question above-the-fold.
**Example: Poster:**
P: “Thank you sooo much! You saved my day… I could not thank you more!”
A: (after 10m) “You’re welcome! PS: You can always say “thanks” by marking the answer as ‘Correct’ 😉 ”
P: “I’m totally marking your answer as CORRECT!! Thanks again!!!!!”
(still no Checkmark)
**Example: Visitor (<15RP) finds a cool answer**
V: {Hmm where can I say thanks, this topic seems protected of sort…}
(Performs a CTRL+C)
**Example Undegistered**
(U: upvotes) "Your vote has been registered! Nobody actually cares and the answer will get no points whatsoever".
(Performs a CTRL+C)
(U: leaves happy)
Is a clap the best we can do? if so:
**Example: Poster:**
P: "Thank you sooo much! You saved my day… I could not thank you more!"
A: (after 10m) "You're welcome! PS: You can always say "thanks" by marking the answer as 'Correct' 😉 "
P: "I'm totally marking your answer as CORRECT!! Thanks again!!!!!"
(still no Checkmark)
A: "Welcome to SO! I see youo're a new user! Five people answered your question which is appx a 2.5h cumulative manpower work. Accept the answer that was more helpful to you."
(P: claps A: leaves for the day)
*"If you join more telescopes you might have a cleaner signal from space"*
I’m being mostly an answerer and the only “thank you” I understand is points. That’s the whole reason I answer on this site. If tomorrow I only get thanks, I will stop answering.
You don’t get even notified of a thanks, you don’t get any point. Why not 1 little point at least?
It’s supposed to be used by people who have not enough points, ok fine, but people who have enough points use it too! Or restrict thanks to people who only have that to say thanks.
IMHO, right now, this is a 100% useless and dumb feature
I think this feature should be limited to people without enough reputation to upvote – i.e. those under 15 reputation. The upvote button is there for a reason, and upvoting an answer is as good as a ‘thanks’. Now with this new feature, some people may be inclined to think that an answer is ‘not worthy enough’ of an upvote and just click the ‘thanks’ button instead, leaving the person who answered short of the potential reputation s/he would’ve gotten.
Sorry, I think this is a bad idea – it’s just adding complication. It’s another option in expressing approval of a good answer, an alternative as other have said to upvoting or even accepting an answer.
Every user “saying thanks” for an answer is less likely to upvote that answer (“Well, I already pressed the thank you button!”).
Keep it simple.
PM should read their own blog carefully: https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/01/08/how-to-say-thanks-in-an-answer/
I think this is a good idea which addresses a specific problem. AND ONLY ONE SPECIFIC PROBLEM, which is, letting newer users without enough points to upvote a chance to express their gratitude. So why not let it be just that? Show the “thanks” button to only the new users without enough points to upvote. And down the line, if someone earns enough points to actually cast a vote, this could also be translated to an upvote.
As it stands it just creates clutter and confusion. And its not actually adding the “human element” of saying “thank you”. I would argue its only as good as using the upvote. And people who upvote also tend to post thank you comments. So there is a difference there.
At first it stackoverflow looked like a newbie-hostile platform, but after my first couple downvoted questions I read the rules and really appreciated it. After understanding the value of quality answers, I am now convinced that giving everyone the ability to endorse an answer is a BAD idea. The reputation system sets the bar for quality on stackoverflow. If anything, I think upvotes should require MORE reputation. I see answers with lots of upvotes that go completely against stackoverflow’s mentality and rules, spagetti code with with zero explanation and with bad practices. Upvotes on my answers make me happy, and they inherently reflect that someone appreciated the question or answer. With the “thank” system, all you are doing is allowing people who haven’t yet demonstrated the capacity to differentiate good and bad content the ability to endorse. And also I think the fact that I googled “stackoverflow thank you vs upvote” is in itself evidence that the ‘thank you’ button is complication at best.
It’s a nice thought though, but I still vote that it goes away
I’m a user without enough reputation to comment (on 2 atm). My course started me off with Java and now I’m self-learning C++ from the book “C++ Primer” by Lippman et al. Many of my questions have already been asked, so I cannot easily gain reputation by asking questions (I don’t have any!). Many questions that are being asked are too technical for me to answer, especially since users don’t ask easy questions in the first place (as they have probably been asked already). Of the two questions I have asked, neither received any votes despite users helping me in the comments.
So here I am, reading an SO post with many answers that help me greatly with C++ function pointer types (“What does it mean to have a function pointer type?”). I really want to tell a particular user who went through it all step by step, “Hey! Thanks for this answer. It helped me greatly in answering Q 6.54 of C++ Primer. :)”, but all I can do is react with an emoticon …
I guess what I am saying is that you seem to have conflated to separate issues: new users cannot comment without 50 reputation, and new users want to be able to give thanks to answers that helped them. Your solution was not to figure out how to allow new users to comment their thanks, but to give *everyone* the ability to thank. But what use is a thank button for users with greater than 50 reputation, because they can already vote on and thank answers in the comments! That is to say:
1. New users with <50 reputation can thank via the thank button
2. Users with 50+ reputation can vote on answers, comment their thanks, and ALSO use the thank button intended for users with <50 reputation …? How redundant!
I understand the 50 reputation requirement, but I think the real issue here is how you earn reputation in the first place. I have read your acknowledgement that the reputation hurdle is a trade off between dealing with spam and helping with moderation, and barring people like me who want to legitimately contribute. However, as I explained, it is becoming harder for new users like me to earn reputation as the site grows. I don't think the solution should've been to add a thank button, as its purpose is already encapsulated in the voting and comment system. Your solution should've been implementing additional methods to verify legitimate users like me who are struggling to garner reputation.
I'm not even sure if anyone of worth is going to read this comment, but eh … I thought I'd share my thoughts as one of the target users you made this feature for.
Looking forward to see this removed again.
There actually *is* a place on Stack Overflow where I would appreciate seeing a clapping hands icon indicating approval and a count showing how many times it has been clicked.
And that’s on these stackoverflow.blog comments.
So I read through a bunch of comments (not all), and even though I’m mostly restating what other said, I felt nonetheless that I should add my 2c.
The reason I found this blog post is because I was very confused about upvote vs thanks buttons. I still am. And even after a bunch of comments, I still am. The comments arguing that “answer is not high quality but still somehow helpful deserve thanks but not upvote,” while having some truth to it, seem to address a relatively obscure, edge-case scenario. It certainly wouldn’t communicate to the author of the post what is it that s/he being thanked for or how is it not upvote worthy.
It seems if someone found the question/answer useful, then upvote is exactly that – indication that it was good _for them_ (especially so for the questions). Not correct (a.k.a. high-quality) answer that somehow helps someone, but argumentatively shouldn’t be upvoted is even less informative, and SO already has facility for a much better and constructive addition of information: post new question and provide your own answer, and you can reference the answer to explain how it helped (or in the answer comment with link to the new q/a, with proper verbiage decoration).
But I think this feature misses most fundamental reason that people post thank you comments – albeit contrary to community rules. It is to _express_ gratitude and feel-good emotion from receiving it; it’s not a competion of points. A `🙏-17` is devoid of feeling or emotion or context. As an answerer, it tells me nothing, nor evokes any emotions. It’s a number that some algorithm can use to calculate something. But receiving a “oh, thanks a bunch, I’ve been banging my head on this for a week” is much more rewarding than `🙏+1` (and wondering why person didn’t upvote to get credit). IOW, a “thank you” as a number is devoid of “thank you” itself!
I get – and I really do – that a bunch of thank you comments flood and dilute the informative aspect of content. Perhaps a better balance can be striked? How about having a way of marking a comment as a “thank you” comment, and allow easy filtering of those for that clean look (and you can still get that count number if you wanted to)?
Why use “folded hands” as thanks icon? Please see https://emojipedia.org/folded-hands/.
It is confusing.
In South East, South, and East Asian countries it’s mean pray or in my country it is says sorry.
Why not use clapping emoji instead which is widely recognized gesture of appreciation?
This feature should only be available to users whose reputation is insufficient to upvote.
Its purpose is in conflict with the existing controls. It was created specifically to give low rep users a way to show appreciation. For other users it presents a confusing choice between reaction icon and voting. Voting works. Reactions are a placebo.
No its not good, few points in brief:
1) Its confusing up-vote or thanks
2) as argued for new comer doesn’t have credits to up-vote or to comments. That is the challenge in gamification, one has to cross first hurdle.
There are so many comments above I’d genuinely like to applaud.
Is there any support for there being a clickable gratitude icon next to blog post comments?
What happened to this feature? It seems the feature was removed.
I was looking for information about the reason for removing this feature, but nothing found. What will happen next?
Now everyone noticed that this feature was removed.
This was a nice feature in ADDITION to the upvote, sometimes I’d like to upvote twice and this button was somehow satisfying.
Every upvote is an implicit “thank you”.
https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/01/08/how-to-say-thanks-in-an-answer/
Nice i really enjoyed reading your blogs. Keep on posting. Thanks