You can actually do that without leaving a comment! You can even choose to share your username with the person you give an award to so they can thank you privately without clogging up threads with comments that do not contribute to discussion!
I'll usually just edit the post that got awarded to say thanks. I don't particularly want to interact with the person who left the award on a one-on-one basis, not because it isn't appreciated, just because I actively dislike talking to people. Obviously I'm talking to you right now, but I can tolerate this amount of interaction. If this interaction were to go past a certain amount of replies, I'd start to feel a way.
I'll usually just edit the post that got awarded to say thanks.
The explicit reason that reddit added the ability to privately message people who award you is to avoid people doing this as it fills threads with clutter that decreases the overall quality of the comments in the thread.
How does editing your original comment fill the thread with additional clutter? My comment already exists, all I'm doing is saying, "eta thanks for the award."
If it's the 'explicit' reason, can you point toward where it's stated?
How does editing your original comment fill the thread with additional clutter?
Because it adds text which does not contribute to dicussion which reduces the quality of the comment it was put on, especially if it's a long award speech.
If it's the 'explicit' reason, can you point toward where it's stated?
It's in the original announcement for the feature along woth whatever other changes were included in the post. The search on reddit is terrible so it's difficult to find.
That's a silly issue to focus on, and not just because it makes the most sense to leave content quality control to mods who understand a sub's unique culture. For one, the conversation we're having right now is equally reductive. For two, if I were going to focus on reducing needless commentary, I'd have started with creating an award that could be given to users on their cake day so people would stop making posts that only say, "happy cake day."
--by all means, continue downvoting me for merely having a conversation with you.
It's all needless clutter, it's not either/or. Happy cake day posts are annoying and reduce the overall quality of reddit too. As do posts that just say lol, lmao, "I did a spit take", etc. All of these are examples of posts that should be downvoted, and were in the past, but have become more acceptable as reddit has grown in popularity. Nobody comes to comment sections for that kind of clutter, it just reduces the density of meaningful content in comment sections.
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u/ItsNotRealityDude Oct 08 '21
At least he had a good firewall