i prefer saying it in a message, so as not to seem rude by appearing to try to get people to look at my gallery.

I do it most of the time; but if a person has started faving EVERYTHING I do, I stop thanking them personalty.
And sometimes I just say 'fuck it' I feel bad about the people who fav and don't get thanked durring those periods, but... it's jsut one more thing.

Sadly I don't. I should, I really should, but I don't check DA as often as I use to. College an trying to make some cash via SL eats away at my time, the ADD an' a bad memory doesn't help ether.

Usually, I do. However, there are times I just don't feel like it, so I save it for later, or sometimes just delete it (I'll only delete it if it's one of my desktops - I really didn't do anything, so why bother?) Also, if I go to their page and notice they don't reply when someone thanks them, I won't bother.

I used to thank everyone who faved, but then I posted my Edward Cullen bashing motivational poster, which since then gets at least 2 favs a day, and usually more, and when I went on vacation it all just got away from me. I was unprepared for so much response...so I kinda gave up. But I used to! ^_^

All these responses are really fascinating - I love hearing different people's perspectives.

A bit of background. I have a tendency to +fav huge batches of things, and then get mildly annoyed when my inbox turns out to be overflowing with "thanks for the +favs!" instead of, you know, any kind of substantial discussion (be that "comments to my art" or "replies to comments I've left on other people's art" or whatever).

And then there are the numbers. For instance, in the past 24 hours, I haven't uploaded anything new (the last upload was 40 hours ago), and I've gotten 14 favorites/collections and one new watch, from a total of twelve different people. I definitely don't have time to go to 12+ profiles a day just to copypaste something.

But then I started wondering if I was making some kind of huge social faux pas by not doing so. Which was followed by me wondering how people feel about the practice in general. Thus, the poll.

So it's really heartening to see that people don't have angry opinions either way ("WHY DO PEOPLE DO THIS IT'S SO ANNOYING RRRRGH" or "WHAT KIND OF RUDE PEOPLE DON'T DO THIS OMG"). And, like I said...hearing a variety of thoughts, feelings, ideas, opinions, desires, histories...that's never not interesting

When I first came to dA, that was what everyone did- there were no people who didn't comment back unless they were so popular 50% of their message center was faves- I asked. I appreciate every favourite, I've commented on their page for all of them and glance over their gallery. I feel it's the least I can do, +1 comment, +1 pageview and sometimes I'll find something I like and the circle continues. I even comment for mass faves, though the comment is usually sarcastic.
Hitler once favourited an invisible deviation in my gallery, it was so worth visiting his page, the angry comments were EVERYWHERE. It was just some kid trying to rile people up- and did it work. There were pages of screaming blasphemies for an account two days old. They were banned the next day. If I didn't have the commenting habit, I would of missed out on the madness!

I don't get them all that often, so I don't because I hardly notice when I get one

I generally don't thank for faves, but I almost always thank for watches, I get them so seldomly. Ultimately, though, comments are golden.

I usually but not always thank a person if the first time they've faved something of mine, but I'm more likely to respond to (and prefer) comments.