I have been helping others in this forum and its predecessors for about eight years now. People have written to me privately to thank me for saving, changing, turning around, or improving their lives, but that's not why I helped them. If they had pushed a thanks button instead of talking to me in their own words, I do believe i would have thought them as superficial as the gesture. I abhor the idea of adding up thanks. In fact, I find the tallying feature downright insulting.

I can't imagine a button-push as thanks to anyone else, either.

I worry about the effects of this trivialization of human relationships on those in emotionally precarious positions. If this were a forum about, say, sparkplug collecting, my feelings would be different.

Jaye