Excellent point M2.
There are a ton of posters that left that i miss, simply because their opinions were denigrated to the point of personal attacks. And that usually followed with a herd mentality of follow up written abuse. I'd be willing to bet it's why we don't see princeton anymore. Sure he had an acerbic quality to his posts, but they were damn interesting. I miss FCB, missed M2, and a bunch of others that simply found the quality in posts lacking to the point of why bother. It isn't that no one new has anything to offer, but we are less without the great posters of the past. If handing someone a rep point as a quiet way of saying thank you for a specific post when you perhaps feel you have nothing of substance to add to the thread is so offensive to some, i'd have to wonder why? I don't like every update on facebook, just the ones I actually like. Posts here are the same to me.
On the XDA forum (Android Forum), any post can be thanked, and the thanks is encouraged for posts that deserve it. Have we come to a point where we cannot appreciate a post and say thanks without adding needless posts to a thread?