Just another example/thought:
Users come to our forum to report issues with our Video On Demand channel. I must compile all these issues into a spreadsheet.
These members are unable to tell if I’ve read their posts or not, so I have been “liking” them to show I’ve added them to the report. Answering each individual post is time-consuming and would require a lot of “Thanks for your report” posts and would make each day’s posts go on and on.
These users do not come into the forums for anything else but this one thread, so are not really as forum-savvy as our regular users. They do not always scroll up to their last post to see what has been written in their absence and tend to just scroll to the bottom to add another post.
I do not necessarily “like” everything I read about the problems users are having, but having some indicator that I’ve read their posts and am reporting on them makes them feel like someone cares.