I am not at all surprised that from time to time someone asks such questions, because new people who come to the forum are obviously under the strong influence of social networks where
"like" is something completely normal. Maybe it wouldn't even be a bad idea even on the forum, although it shouldn't be highlighted in any special way, it would just be an indicator that members like a post, and considering that sMerits are not available to everyone, maybe
"like" button" would be small but useful addition to the forum. If we want to attract young people, we obviously have to give them some features that are obviously important to them.
~snip~
If you want to show gratitude, you can just quote the reply and say Thank you, it's done.
Quoting the entire post to just write
"thank you" is a very bad idea in my opinion, especially if you do it several times in the same topic. It would be appropriate to make multiquotes of all the posts to which thanks refer and edit them - but we cannot expect such a way of communication from all members.