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Just Wanted to Say Thanks

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141–150 of 257 posts

Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#141
post #51

I've been on the receiving end of such gratitude, and it always brightens my day. It's easy to think your hard work isn't noticed, until you realize how seldom you acknowledge other people's work. Unfortunately, explicit gratitude is very rare. Donations are even rarer. The "ask a question" and "support this site" buttons on my website are next to each other. I get 15 questions for every donation. About 30€ per 100 0…

>Those who email me with questions never donate. Can you ask them to? It's not exactly the same problem, but I have a modestly successful youtube channel, and I get unsolicited email questions seeking help every day, and I personally try and answer all that I can. I've used the following technique and it helped me receive donations to offset the support effort. I added a quiet but clear call to action my support repl…

The website already earns enough. Donations wouldn't make a big difference, so I don't feel comfortable directly asking for them. Nonetheless, I'll give it a try. Thank you for the suggestion!

Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#142

I’ve learned that when I have a positive thought about someone, it’s generally worth communicating it. If I think a coworker saved me on some project, I tell them. If my partner is making me feel warm and fuzzy, I tell her. If someone impresses me, I say so. I don’t think people express these things nearly as often as they feel them, and I expect that many of the positive things that do end up communicated have anoth…

To an extent. As I become more generous with my compliments, I find that even a genuine compliment might be too much sometimes. That being said, I never miss a chance to praise people's work. As long as you don't make a big scene out of it, it's always appreciated.

Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#143
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We then read them all out followed by a round of applause for each one of them That may be good for team building and make some people feel better but, personally, I would find that situation very uncomfortable.

I imagine it might also cause adverse effects if someone happens to be missed.

I have personally experienced this. My otherwise really good manager had a monthly vote for the best worker in our small team where each vote was publicly announced. I, and another coworker, never got a vote while others got several. Really great way to make some of your workers feel really left out!

Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#144
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying "thank you" expresses an infinite amount more gratitude than someone taking half a second to click a button. Please don't boil positivity down into just another dopamine fix. It's so fucking fake. Star too, donate too, whatever you'd like to do normally too but nothing beats actually using your words

If you put it that way, I think GitHub could enable a platform feature to collect finance contributions from fans/users. Heck, even licensing costs. That makes open source programmers earn some money as well - of course along with a text field to say “thanks”.

https://github.com/sponsors

Github launched Github Sponsors in 2019. It does basically everything you described aside from the "thanks" part.

Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#145
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those who email me with questions never donate. Can you ask them to? It's not exactly the same problem, but I have a modestly successful youtube channel, and I get unsolicited email questions seeking help every day, and I personally try and answer all that I can. I've used the following technique and it helped me receive donations to offset the support effort. I added a quiet but clear call to action my support repl…

The website already earns enough. Donations wouldn't make a big difference, so I don't feel comfortable directly asking for them. Nonetheless, I'll give it a try. Thank you for the suggestion!

The parent reply here is arguably just "priming" the reader to remember that donations are an appropriate way of showing thanks for the help. It's not that people are unwilling or unable to afford to give a donation (although some cannot), its more that they don't even consider it in the first place. A gentle reminder, even smaller and simpler than the above example, just prompts them to consider if they would donate.

Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#146
post #39
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When logging in with GitHub, it asks for the following permissions: * Verify your GitHub identity * Know which resources you can access * Act on your behalf What does the last one mean, and why is it needed?

That's just a misconfiguration of the GitHub app I haven't gone around to fix yet. We certainly don't act on your behalf, we only check basic information.

I had that issue too when building something w/ GitHub auth. Instead of making your app a GitHub App, make it an OAuth App (which should only ask for profile data).

Edit: see https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/developers/a...

Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#147
post #51

I've been on the receiving end of such gratitude, and it always brightens my day. It's easy to think your hard work isn't noticed, until you realize how seldom you acknowledge other people's work. Unfortunately, explicit gratitude is very rare. Donations are even rarer. The "ask a question" and "support this site" buttons on my website are next to each other. I get 15 questions for every donation. About 30€ per 100 0…

> No one will create a thread to say "everything is fine, keep it up".

I was lucky enough to receive a thread exactly like this [0], in response to a user complaining about my support response time [1]. Admittedly, it was in response to me saying "No-one ever writes threads like this", but it was still lovely to receive.

0. https://groups.google.com/g/cursive/c/Zw8JExDavrE/m/HDILSRCj...

1. https://groups.google.com/g/cursive/c/wZOjmj2Jits/m/Iu7_6iuD...

Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine it might also cause adverse effects if someone happens to be missed.

I have personally experienced this. My otherwise really good manager had a monthly vote for the best worker in our small team where each vote was publicly announced. I, and another coworker, never got a vote while others got several. Really great way to make some of your workers feel really left out!

If they handed out the award to everyone it would be meaningless

Re: Just Wanted to Say Thanks

#150

Expressing gratitude is one of the surest paths to a better day. One of my all-time favorite books -- "How to Want What You Have" by Tim Miller, PhD -- has as its central thesis the idea that: 1. Most people are relatively unhappy; 2. The root cause is our tendency always to want More [money/power, love, recognition] -- which stems from evolutionarily adaptive traits; 3. The remedy is to live in the present moment --…

Very similar ideas are foundational to the practice of meditation/mindfulness and teachings of Buddhism generally. Popular teachers such as Jack Kornfield, Thich Nhat Hanh, Sharon Salzburg, Pema Chodron (among many others) have great books covering these ideas.
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