I'm starting to think that the word “thanks” is becoming overutilized, therefore cheapened and perhaps meaningless, in today's online correspondence.  I hope this is only constrained to IT, but maybe it's worse than I think…

Take a look at your .signature file.  Does it have some form of Thanks! included above the contact information?  If so, you are part of the problem!  Why say thanks to everything?  It's supposed to be said when you are thanking someone for something!  Webster's says:

to express gratitude, appreciation, or acknowledgment to: She thanked them for their hospitality.

What purpose does a thanks! serve when the body of the e-mail relates to oh, asking someone why a server was shut down without a notification message sent to the Unix administrators group?  Thanks for being incompetent?  Or, how about a thanks! after canceling a meeting due to scheduling conflicts.. thanks for being unavailable?  How about after sending out general information, like “the 21 subnet will be retired this weekend” - thanks for reading this?

Can we all just reserve this word for situations when it's appropriate?

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