Requested feature overview description.
Some need positive feedback and sometimes it's good to give that when you see someone doing something positive.

Have "Thanks!" (or some furry variation which all the cool furs use) button next to tag, note and wiki edit history. This would then show up green bar on top of page saying "<user> thanked you for your edit in <place> <change>" which user can easily dismiss. This way they get the feedback, without needing to open their inbox.

Reduce the amount of thanks user can give into something really low (1/week) so that system cannot be abused, users who actually do lots of things won't get spammed and keeps positivity of getting thanks high.

E: partially stolen idea from this https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Thanks[/i]Why would it be useful?
Right now sites system is based on that only administration can give "green bars", which is not only rare, but sometimes someone doing good small things can be left unnoticed - because how much easier it is to notice negative behavior going on. This would give regular users way to quickly thank someone without needing to get annoying with dmails. What part(s) of the site page(s) are affected?
Tag, note and wiki edit history, notification system.

unlike a Facebook Like, i would hope this does not turn into an addiction mechanism, where one bases their entire experience here on the amassment of pretty green things. if the "thanks" shows up on the users profile, i feel it would lead to ego stroking, and encourage editors to go into a type of bombastic editing which encourages large edits and discourages the work-a-day small edits that boost your tag count.

but i would like to see it implemented, which based on the track record of most websites will be never.

Mario69 said:

Reduce the amount of thanks user can give into something really low (1/week) so that system cannot be abused, users who actually do lots of things won't get spammed and keeps positivity of getting thanks high.

1 a week? That would make the system basically pointless. I think 10 per hour, which is the limit for upvoting/downvoting comments, would make more sense.

BlackLicorice said:
1 a week? That would make the system basically pointless. I think 10 per hour, which is the limit for upvoting/downvoting comments, would make more sense.

That'd be too prone to abuse, I would think that 1 a day would be on the edge of being acceptable.

Alternatively, there could be a system like e-hentai's. It would start at 1 a week for new users, but would scale up based on account age, comments, uploads, forum posts, tag edits, and other similar features.

+1 one per day.

if the administration was so inclined, they can produce an experiment seeing how rare they can make the "thanks" before it becomes meaningless, and how common they can make it before it becomes worthless.

a trial run of such a thing would provide some interesting results for future incentives to edit. but is it too naive of me to say the thrill of editing is in the editing itself, and not by external reward?

-1. If you need constant thanks to do a good job, then you're not very good at your job.

Furrin_Gok said:
-1. If you need constant thanks to do a good job, then you're not very good at your job.

I think it's less about encouragement and more about the recognition of your good work.

+1. Explanation below:

Is common for social animals to have an urgency of belonging to some group, and consequently, a fear of being expelled from it (since having no one with whom count on might be prejudicial). Due to this, praises and recognition serve as proof of acceptance, usually resulting in positive responses.

Furrin_Gok said:
-1. If you need constant thanks to do a good job, then you're not very good at your job.

Although I don't believe this feature to be necessary, it might be beneficial, being a useful tool for brief communication between users, and even as an incentive to "keep good work".

O16 said:
Is common for social animals to have an urgency of belonging to some group, and consequently, a fear of being expelled from it (since having no one with whom count on might be prejudicial). Due to this, praises and recognition serve as proof of acceptance, usually resulting in positive responses.

I can relate to this when I first started uploading. A big motivator for me back then was seeing positive comments on my posts.

What are the odds that hardly anyone would use this feature?

I say we rip off the badge system from DA and get creative. \('▽')/

BlackLicorice said:
1 a week? That would make the system basically pointless. I think 10 per hour, which is the limit for upvoting/downvoting comments, would make more sense.

The purpose of this feature wouldn't be just another upvote. Think of the situations like you uploading something and not sure about how to tag obvious thing in image, creating wiki page and someone improving it and correcting grammar, someone translating dojin that has been untranslated for 5 years, etc. Things that you genuinely want to thank the person in question, not just "oh yeah, I agree" what upvote is.

These situations are far and few between, so even week seems bit low to me. See it like Reddits Gold, but without need to actually pay and you usually don't bump into many messages which have that.

Furrin_Gok said:
-1. If you need constant thanks to do a good job, then you're not very good at your job.

I personally am insanely bad at taking thanks or good feedback from my job, especially if it's being given personally. But I know, there are individuals, who genuinely want to do good job, but simply stop seeing the point on what they are doing and it starts to feel like they are doing nothing for nobody. Users who we would most likely want to see more of.

Also another thing to consider is, that we do have green bar system already, this just makes the thing worse, as if someone is doing really good job without making much noise or constantly doing things, it may go under radar and they do not get one ever, which of course may just increase their questioning of why the others, but not them.

I have seen couple cases where users have gone even "fuck it" route and start flipping tables, because negatitivy is seen instantly, so they get instant regocnizion.

BlueDingo said:
What are the odds that hardly anyone would use this feature?

Couple sites which are using similar systems, thanks are pretty far and few between, but the site using above linked example, I sometimes get thanks for completely cleaning up one article which has been total mess. That does make it good to know that I'm doing something good, doing something right and there's at least one person who actually cares that I did that.

And even though that only shows for a while in notifications, I still see it and that's all that matters.

I personally disagree. But if it does get implemented, I can only hope that people won't start editing just for the sake of getting them, or worse, start thanks-begging.

banhday said:
I personally disagree. But if it does get implemented, I can only hope that people won't start editing just for the sake of getting them, or worse, start thanks-begging.

But it doesn't show up publicly, only as notification to user, so why would they start begging them? I feel like many are missing the whole point of the system to some level of "level" showing up on profile or something, which this is most certainly not.

And there have already been cases of users mass uploading and mass tagging just to get that upload and edit counter number up as much as possible, so this would discourage that and instead encourage some actually well done stuff. Showing thanks as list or amount on profile would just go back to square one where users would start to do some malicious stuff.

banhday said:
I can only hope that people won't start editing just for the sake of getting them

whats bad with something like this motivating people to work more? as long as they dont mess up things, i see no harm in people doing work just in hopes of rewards

I feel like if something is worth thanking someone over, it's worth actually saying "thank you". Not a big fan of this sort of thing.