Who cares? I find this a little obsessive and scolding. And the stupid smiley face only adds to the irritation.
If I answered a guy’s question, he didn’t respond, and only checked in again a year later, again without responding, that would tell me something about how serious he was and whether I should bother helping him anymore. Those little notices don’t always matter, but they can, IMO.
I think the idea is that it encourages other posters to welcome that person back to the forum. I find the notifications that a given post is somebody’s first very useful, as I always like to welcome new posters to the forum if I happen to be the first to reply to their question, though these ones are a bit less useful in general. However, I think they’re harmless at worst and can be helpful at best.
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This forum runs on Discourse. I run and manage several Discourse servers. It’s part of the Discourse philosophy and outlook of what they call ‘building community’ - making members feel welcome with lots of small things like this. [It’s actually quite hard to turn off this behaviour, as this community building spirit is central to Discourse.] You may find these items soppy or irrelevant, but I think it’s fair to say they are mostly harmless.