Is it okay to post, here on meta, a simple Thank You to our moderators?

Question

I would just like to write a very large "Thank you" to our moderators here, past and present. Things I've recently discovered on other sites across SE have brought into sharp focus the way U&L runs so smoothly.

I've been a forum addict since long before the days of Stackoverflow and I've always been aware how important good moderators are to a community. Without them forums of any kind (even Stack exchange ones) become cliquey, sour, and eventually die.

I think it's a great credit to all the moderators here, past and present, that U&L remains a largely healthy community where technical discussion (even debate sometimes) is encouraged. I wholly believe that they have been even handed, tolerant, polite, and above all respectful to the wishes of the community.

I know in the past I may have been [quite vocally] opposed to an occasional decision here. I now wholly regret not taking the opportunity at the time to express how well I believe our moderators are doing generally.

So yeah... Thanks!

Answer 1

Since this is a Q&A site, this calls for an answer, and since I’m not a moderator I don’t have the same qualms as terdon!

I think this is OK, and in fact fits quite well under

Meta is for Unix & Linux Stack Exchange users to communicate with each other about Unix & Linux Stack Exchange (asking questions about how the websites work, or about policies and community decisions)

It’s not “asking a question” as such but it is communicating.

(And thank you to the moderators, and to all the non-moderators who contribute to the general atmosphere here!)

Answer 2

From a general standpoint, I believe that whatever topic supported by the community has full rights to stand where it stands.

For the sole sake of niggling, I might suggest that it could eventually have found an even better place as an answer to the 2022: a year in moderation thread which just suggests the deserved thanks OP mentions but… not only, since it outlines the help from :

• "the non-moderators who contribute to the general atmosphere here!" as Stephen rightly added to the list,
• Some community-manager(s) that were directly involved at least twice, should'nt we be thankful to them as well ?

Let' niggle even more : I personally find hard to be thankful to abstractions and moderators is an abstraction. As schrodingerscatcuriosity wrote it in a comment, they are individual human beings and I find it more meaningful to thank them individually, therefore :

Many thanks Jeff Schaller, Kusalananda, slm and terdon.
Many thanks to anonymous_community-manager
Many thanks to Philip, Stephen and schrodingerscatcuriosity (list made that short only for staying… on topîc… ;-P)