I like the "Thanks" option other forums have.
If you want to thank someone, you can pm the person. If you like a post, you can merit such post. If you do not have have merit, you can report the post
here. Let me tell you one thing, the merit is working good on this forum, no need for likes or thanks or whatever you are suggesting, what matters most to us here are quality post, you can see many posts that are quality enough which makes your suggestion invalid.
To report post, just take a look at lower right part of each post including your post, you will see a report button, click on it and report what you want to report.
You are right, the merit system was introduced as a package to encourage quality post/helpful topics, which is almost the same as the like function on some other platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. etc