I just wanted to make a quick suggestion. On another forum I'm on, they converted the thanks button on vBulletin to a like button. This is an awesome feature and it really helps the flow of the conversation.
I think it could even help you control bandwidth at busy times, because I find myself just clicking the like button when I like a thread, instead of having to make a full-blown comment with a quote. It cleans up the forum and is actually really cool.
Here is a post I found on how to do the mod.
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=266358
Hope the mods will think about adding this feature.