Each user can see who thanked him (it is nice to know who are one's friends, isn't it?
), but statistics about thanked/found-useful posts for each user are not public.
Yes they are, but as usual the SMF user interface is less than helpful in guiding you to find them. Summary statistics are hidden at the bottom of the forum index page, and you can see any users 'thanked' count by looking them up in the members list.
You have been thanked on average 0.27 times per post whereas I have been thanked on average 0.77 times per post. That to my mind conclusively proves that any metric based around thanks is worthless because while I like to hope I'm a useful contributor from time to time I most certainly
don't think I'm the über contributor that statistic would seem to imply.
There's also the issue you allude to but don't express directly: "
Any metric once created will be gamed". Someone will play in such a way as to inflate the metric rather than to behave in the way the metric was supposed to measure positively for, wasting time trying to bolster the metric rather than doing something useful to produce the outcome the metric was intended to measure. I don't think anybody is currently gaming the thanks statistics, but if they were given prominence they would almost certainly become "gamed".
If anyone needs any more convincing that "Thanks" as is currently implemented is a useless metric, here it is. This is the top 10 most thanked people, as spat out by SMFs stats. I've added number of posts and calculated a "Thanks per post" ratio as a percentage.
| User | Thanked | Posts | Thanks to post ratio |
| med6753 | 10634 | 10178 | 104.48% |
| bd139 | 10404 | 20506 | 50.74% |
| EEVblog | 8600 | 33942 | 25.34% |
| Cerebus | 7288 | 9403 | 77.51% |
| mnementh | 6045 | 15133 | 39.95% |
| tautech | 4926 | 23059 | 21.36% |
| james_s | 4404 | 16959 | 25.97% |
| BU508A | 4012 | 3803 | 105.50% |
| T3sl4co1l | 3680 | 18610 | 19.77% |
| tggzzz | 3531 | 14611 | 24.17% |
Note how that puts Tim (T3sl4co1l) at the bottom of the ranking by "Thanks per post", one of the most useful contributors (arguably
the most useful) on the forum and Mounty (BU508A) at the top, who while being a sterling chap, and very generous to boot, isn't in Tim's league (Sorry Mounty). (Note, these are
only the top 10 thanked, so the ranking on the ratio of thanks per post is
only out of these 10 posters, not the whole forum.)