Should I be removing "Thanks!"?

Question

Occasionally, I see a question on the main site that ends in

Thanks!

or

Thanks for any help that you can give.

or

Thanks in advance.

or one of the million other ways to write an insincere, impersonal "thank you".

I've read on the main Stack Exchange Meta that we should edit these out: they're noise, and they don't add anything to the question. I think that's how it works on Stack Overflow, where the number of questions is much greater than what we see here. However, EE:SE is much smaller and more personal, and people might have different opinions.

Should I be editing these out?

(I guess my question also applies to

Hi,

and

Would appreciate any insight you have

and

[insert name at bottom of question]

)

Answer 1

You can if you want to. Frankly, they don't seem to be all that bothersome here on EE.SE, and it's thankless work.

I generally do it only if I'm already editing a post for some other reason.

Answer 2

As a rule of thumb:

a) if it's a short "thanks!", I remove such parts if and only if there's something else to fix in a post. There usually is, because 99% of the time such salutations are a sign of a newcomer, but if a question/answer is otherwise top-notch, it's a good idea to spend your energy elsewhere.

b) If it's, e.g., a 3-sentence "I would be very grateful if somebody would help me. Any help would be appreciated. My sincere thanks.", IMO it warrants an edit action of its own, because it makes harder (sometimes a lot) to figure what OP really wants/needs.

BTW, in such situations I often find the main question/problem statement repeated a couple of times in the text, sometimes the paragraphs are ordered strangely (e.g. question asked first, repeating the title just below it, the actual problem/research/thoughts described after that etc.) - in short, the Thanks! is usually a sign that there is something in need of fixing. If there ain't, I suppose it's best to let it be.

NB this is also, not surprisingly, along the lines of what e.g. Olin says on this matter.

_{As a side note: Greg, you got my +1 for or one of the million other ways to write an insincere, impersonal "thank you" - that's the main problem with such Thanks IMO - they usually don't make me feel better (regardless of the fact that's not what Q/A is about for me), but they usually make the Q/A worse in terms of readability & content.}