Have you considered leaving the "Thanks" system in, but removing the little sentence saying "Thanked __ Times In __ Posts"? I like the Thanks system because it's nice when threads aren't clogged with one-line posts saying "thank you" or "I agree with ____"... But having the number of thanks listed below your username might be misleading. Say that someone owns a lot of animals and takes pictures of them every day to post, but isn't very helpful when it comes to answering questions or giving advice. But if this person gets 100 thank you's for pictures, and someone else gets 100 thank you's for writing long, thoughtful posts and trying very hard to help people with their setups, how does it make sense that these two people can be compared with the number of thanks they have?

Also, if the "Thanked __ Times" was removed, maybe people would be more inclined to use the rep button for the useful, though-out post rather than hit that easy "thanks" button and leave it at that.