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Comment by Derbasti | Hacker News Reader

You know, I wrote a number of successful open source packages. By and large, feedback is positive, or at least utilitarian: bug reports, feature requests, questions. But there is also the occasional angry user, or, rarely, a simple thank you.

Recently, I published my first-ever commercial video game plugin. And was dumbfounded by the sheer positivity of the response. People thanked me! I got dozens of purely positive emails. I had never experienced such a thing in my Open Source work.

If we had more of that in Open Source, maybe maintainership wouldn't be such a burden.

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I wouldn't dare writing just to say "thank you", it would feel like a no-op wasting people time. Instead, I would rather star the project on github. Did you consider those as thanks?

Having published some apps a few years ago, the occasional thank you mail can be a real moral boost. Dehumanized interaction such as staring a project is not of the same category.

I totally get it, it's all a question of balance, I guess. An _occasional_ thanks you mail is great. On the other hand, getting pass the 100 stars on a project on github is a big moral boost too, and probably wouldn't feel so great if each one was a mail :)

But actually, I realize both can easily be reconciled : we could send a "thank you" message to projects with low amount of github stars, and just star those which have a high amount. This would both cheer solo dev starting their project and avoid annoying bigger teams on well established projects.

Has anyone ever been annoyed with a thank you email? Compared to the crap/spam/adverts that turns up in our inboxes every single day, a genuine thank you from an actual human being should be fine. And if not, just stick it in the spam folder with everything else. Github stars are utterly meaningless to many.

As someone who gets a ton of spam email and occasional thank you emails from my open source work, I have never been annoyed by a thank you email.

So I'll say that saying "thank you" is a highly valuable activity. It boosts people's spirits and makes them feel appreciated. Remember: we're humans and somewhat touchy feely. Gratitude is motor oil for us.

Also, tragically the world is wired to provide feedback mostly of the negative kind. This is useful to receive but also it's an unfortunate skew. Positive feedback with a few details about what is good are a hugely valuable contribution.

But if you don't have that amount of time, saying "thanks" alone is worth the keystrokes. :-)

Sadly (well at least to me) saying "thank you" for example in a github issue is considered next to spam. You can write a long description of an issue or solution and add "thank you" but it's considered a waste to say just say "thank you" when someone sends a small PR.

I disagree with that culture. I'd prefer we all exchanged the small "thank yous" even in github threads, code review, etc... but knowing the majority seem to feel it's spam I find most of the time I feel pressure not to write them.

Maybe a few "leaders" like Linus or whoever came out with "say thank you" would help?

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