so you all know i'm one of those people who's very much in support of leaving comments on old fics if you liked them, because the author probably still wants to know if someone is loving their old fic
(i've probably reblogged some tumblr posts to this effect)
but i was just browsing stack overflow and saw the comments on one of the answers, and the first (oldest) one said something to the effect of "it's been 8 years, but this is still great :)" and others were all just praising the answer, remarking on how helpful it still was even so many years later; another comment, from 10 years later just said "brilliant. perfect."
and it occurred to me that for all the times that i've reblogged posts about commenting years later, or posts that said something to the effect of, "if you don't have the time or energy to give a more in depth comment, just saying 'loved it' is enough to make an author's day",
i have literally never commented on a stack overflow answer (unless i had a technical comment, ie the kind of comment that would probably be called 'con-crit' over in fandom and frowned upon), even when it made my life immeasurably better
... and i probably still won't, since people so rarely do and i would feel awkward and weird being the only one making a non-technical comment, but there have been so many times when i've wanted to, and gosh i wish letting someone know when they improved your day were part of the culture, there, too
(i do get why stack overflow's culture would want to prioritize actually technically relevant comments, because if you're just looking for a discussion so you can all arrive at the correct answer, that's probably more important than letting the author know how much you loved their answer and how helpful you found it,
but gosh, there have been times when i'd been struggling with something for ages and someone wrote exactly what i needed and i just wanted to virtually kiss them for it. maybe there should be a separate thank-the-author comment section)
