I've deliberately not opened "Thank you" issues, because I didn't want to annoy the owner/watchers. Certainly frustrating there is no way to express gratitude.
Star too, donate too, whatever you'd like to do normally too but nothing beats actually using your words
Github launched Github Sponsors in 2019. It does basically everything you described aside from the "thanks" part.
"No I said don't do th.. ah forget it"
Unstar however would become “No thanks”
As a developer what I like even more than thank yous are thank yous that explain how my code helped you in some specific way.
i'll second this.
post some screenshots of the thing you've made with my thing, or how it's improved the user experience or performance improvement metrics. what has my project unlocked for you, e.g. new use cases that were not possible before. compare it to what was there previously. i build open source stuff to scratch my own itches. knowing that it scratches the itches of 10k people instead of just 1 is the best outcome -- maximized impact.
just a thanks is nice but ultimately lowest effort and not that gratifying.
1. If you just wanna thank them, write an email
2. If you want to do so publicly, do so on a public channel (e.g. Blog post, HN, youtube channel, etc)
#2 possibly won’t even be seen by the target.
Opening an issue is seen by the whole team and becomes a place for the community to weigh in. Seems ideal until Github provides better.
https://github.blog/changelog/2020-12-08-github-discussions-...
#2 can be combined with #1 to let them know
I do, then, immediately close "thank you" issues so owners are not tasked with responding in any way, but still... And for any watcher, I imagine they are interested in notifications relevant to actual issues, not thank yous.
My opinion is the current best way to say thank you is probably a star. Beyond that, it would be nice if GitHub added a way to leave a thank you or testimonial or something like that. Or even a formal "the repo is in use by such and such app/company."