I liked the Thanks button mainly because there was a good feeling in knowing that somebody found something you said useful and I liked to be able to let people know when I found their posts particularly useful to me.
I think the problem though was that not everybody knew how to use it properly. I won't call it an abuse (though for some users it definitely was). I've seen threads where the OP (often a new user, but not always) thanked every single post that followed whether it was useful or not (I have yet to see a context where "lol" is a useful post), and other threads where somebody posts something funny then posts laughing at the joked get thanked.
In my mind there are 2 options involving the Thanks button :
1)make it so Mods can remove thanks from posts that obviously are not useful (possibly too subjective though)
2)make Thanks count private, so those who want to brag can brag but others (new users?)don't get swayed into thinking a given user is more knowledgable than another based on thanks count
I think the problem though was that not everybody knew how to use it properly. I won't call it an abuse (though for some users it definitely was). I've seen threads where the OP (often a new user, but not always) thanked every single post that followed whether it was useful or not (I have yet to see a context where "lol" is a useful post), and other threads where somebody posts something funny then posts laughing at the joked get thanked.
In my mind there are 2 options involving the Thanks button :
1)make it so Mods can remove thanks from posts that obviously are not useful (possibly too subjective though)
2)make Thanks count private, so those who want to brag can brag but others (new users?)don't get swayed into thinking a given user is more knowledgable than another based on thanks count