Responding to a text by saying "Thanks." or "Thanks!" is so different. If I was talking to someone and they gave a compliment, I'd want to say a sincere "thanks", but there isn't a way to do that in a text that doesn't come off as weird.
Ideally, everything one says should be sincere, so your idea sounds weird to me. I think I understand you want more options in the communication medium of text since we can't have body language and voice tone here.
Personally, I just try to be consistent with my expressions. If my "Thanks." is always used in situations where I'm "sincere" or "deeply appreciative" or otherwise, then that's what it means from me.
There are people that express themselves with absurd amounts of exclamation points and all sorts of hearts and blushing emojis, and I understand that they haven't gone absolutely crazy for me because of that. I just keep tabs in the different expressions different people have for the same things.
The meanings of expressions are determined by those who use them.
communication is a team sport though. "intended meaning" is only worth anything if the recipient understands it
This is an extremely characteristic HN/engineer comment.
People use irony in communication. It's part of the human repertoire. Saying "oh great" in response to bad news, for example. The notion that ideally there would be no irony in textual communication isn't a practical or desirable possibility. It's in the same Zuckerbergian category as beliefs in the transparency of communication or the sacred integrity of having a single online identity.
The thing that really kills the "sincerity mark" is that there's no reason why it can't be abused and lose its meaning, as has happened with the word "literally".
Yeah, I was thinking that too. I forgot to mention.