A million thank you’s

After the sneak attack from Datuk Rocky’s posting last night, I must say I was pleasantly surprised with the fact that in exactly 3 years of blogging, this blog registered its first million hits.

I started this blog on the 31st of March 2008 with a simple posting called A Tale of Two Prime Ministers.

In hindsight, I would have never thought that for a few months after that, this blog would receive a lot of response from the blogs readers out there.

It is until now, very exciting to receive comments from all parts of the world and I do get the rush when interesting comments coming in.

Traffic started to come in when I ventured into MYKMU.net as a registered forum member.

Afterwards, the people at bigdogdotcom contacted me and asked if I could allow my blog to be linked inside theirs (back in those years, people would ask permission first if they wish to link, or use other bloggers’ articles in one of their postings. But now, we do away with that). Being a rookie blogger at that time, I am more than happy and even felt honored to be part of a well known blog.

When Rockybru started to insert this blog into his blogroll, the traffic started to come in more frequently. I must thank him tremendously for that.

I guess this blog started to be noticed when I posted two postings on Tun Salleh Abbas and Anwar Ibrahim in April 2008.

I was quite shocked to find so many comments and arguments that did not agree with my articles. Some of them were very nasty. I took it upon myself to explain my stand and also try to give a bit more explanation. Imagine, I was just a simple blogger at that time.

I have no interests whatsoever with any of the political parties. What I wrote was based purely on my understanding of the current political climate at the time. So, to get all those disparaging comments was quite a bit of a shock. I didn’t know that there were so many hateful people in blogosphere.

Hang Tuah vs Hang Jebat

But, as I was brought up to be independent (lived in a VI hostel and overseas university, moved out from parents’ house to live alone when I was 23), I have this knack of being a slight adventurous and rebellious person when things did not go my way.

Therefore, when negativity comes in, I would revel in humouring those comments with a reply of my own. I do not take personally any of the offensive comments because, let’s face it, this is just a blog.

So, after 266 articles, 9,085 comments and 36 months later, I am still passionate about it. I must thank all the commentators that had took the time to chip in with their thoughts. Some of them are so intellectually stimulating, they could be a separate blog posting themselves.

I had approved almost 98% of all comments because I believe in giving the space to air your views. I rarely delete your comments unless they are so vile that it wouldn’t make any sense for me to post it up.

As far as I remember, only the commentators with the nick Sputjam , Vesewe and Ruyom were blocked by me purely due to the reasons above.

Some of my close friends who knew my identity would also often carelessly mentioned me by name in the commentary section. This was also deleted for the obvious reason. Also, nearly all the vulgar one-liners will not make the cut because they do not add value to the conversation.

Fellow frequent commentators such as Lekiu, Andipool, Aniseed, Mekyam, Aku, Cam, Freddie Kevin, Mohamed, SatD, Ray, Donplaypuks, Dinturtle, HeroTamil, Apocryphalist, Kiasu, Truthseeker, Algojo, Wenger J. Khairy, Average Joe and many many more had graced this blog in a way that I find very entertaining to other fellow readers.

To the young readers who had openly or privately used this blog as reference point to your theses or study materials, please disregard the harsh language within the commentary section.

The commentary section remained to be one of the most exciting part of the article; sometimes, can be even more riveting than the original post.

Please grow up to be a good member of the public, with civility and proper manners. Learn what you can in the internet but discard all the bad influences that you see.

This blog has always been driven by passion. And in the spirit of togetherness, I wish just for one day, this blog would receive slightly less nasty remarks than normal days.

Jebat Must Rest his mind sometimes too 🙂

To all that had helped me along this journey, whether through information gathering, spiritual and mental support, giving me ideas for my next posting or just plain ‘thank you for the great post JMD’, I salute you all from the deepest region of my heart. A region where one usually save it for loved ones.