Everyone in the world needs to be "liked." That's why you can buy "likes" for Facebook, Twitter and many others to make you feel good and boost your business too. There have been many papers written on this phenomena. You can thank (LOL) Facebook for this annoying feature that you now find everywhere.
Unfortunately it has come upon us here too. Some fora even have DISLIKES (thumbs down) but no one wants to be "not liked" so in the interest of NOT insulting people they thankfully (so far) haven't added DISLIKES (thumbs down) as it is available in this forum software. I have seen many forums that add the names of those who "like" you as they did here. As an example, MACRUMORS is one (although not the same software). There are many others. Some forums, rather than LIKES have THANKS as in "Thank you for the helpful post.".