There have been a few times - reading blog articles or pieces of code - where I've been tempted to write to the author to show some appreciation, but have shied away from it thinking they might take it as creepy or parasocial. It wouldn't, of course, I can write a short "hey, I really liked this" note without coming across like a maniac, but a little voice always stops me short. I'll try to ignore it in future :)

The addition of discussion sections for repos has been really great for this. On a lot of larger projects there's appreciation threads. But any project with thousands of downloads is obviously useful enough to warrant a quick thanks

You’re definitely right. It’s only happened a few times for me and it can be a bit disheartening because you’ll definitely hear from the people who think you’re their enterprise support team or feel that clear gap on the project were suggestions for large amounts of work.