I don't think removing the Thanks system for the more 'serious debate' sections will necessarily be a fix for the issues it causes (or not). Like you said Joe, a Thanks is a way to support a post or an argument without having to write "I support that" or "I'm with x" or "x pretty much sums it up for me" or "^ what s/he said" or "signed" or whatever people tend to write on other forums.
I think, instead of taking a stroll around the pond, lets dive into it and address the
real issue at hand, which has been talked about in posts about the Thanks system before: The tendency for a person to feel 'ganged up upon' when people Thank every other post but theirs. I'm pretty sure, with certain exceptions of course (because there always are exceptions) - pretty much everyone who frequent these forums have had that feeling once or a million times when discussing something we feel strongly about, whether or not it's a debate, opinions, jokes, whatever. Who here can't honestly say they've been thinking "oh, so THAT post you thank you dick!" when checking for Thanks (let's admit it, we do that) on your (and other people's) posts. When I'm in a fragile or bad mood, Thanks can ruin my day. I'll admit that straight away. But I know that that's not an argument to remove Thanks; I need to have the stomach to handle that other people have more popular arguments than me. Which happens, in my opinion, most of the time
Also, it needs to be mentioned that I often Thank posts I don't agree with, but I think are well argumentet. But I guess for most of the time, I Thank posts that managed to say what I'd want to say if I had the time to type it up myself. Or if I could write English that well
tl;dr I guess I don't mind Thanks being removed from the debates section if people who frequent that section agree they want it removed. For a trial time, or forever. Maybe it'll make more people participate - but then again, it might not be the fix for the problem.
Edit: And yeah, I've been in the other end of the 'clique' discussion and I now know what people in the 'clique' meant when they said WHAT CLIQUE!

I mean, yes, there are people here who know other people well, but if people think I'm in any sort of clique right now because my random General Discussion posts are frequently Thanked, well, I might have been in some sort of clique back in 2012 but I barely speak to anyone (on Skype etc) these days; if I do it's Ami, Yop or Lex
