This time last year, I came up with an idea to try and help the flow of conversation. Instead of random comments piling up on whatever blog entry was the last to be posted, I suggested a separate thread, posted every single day for any off-topic thoughts. Mr C thought I was crazy.

Fast forward one year, and the daily thread is a Sidepodinstitution.

From the very first words, we had a good response, but it was only meant to be a trial and initially received just 240 comments. These days, we regularly see 700+ comments a day and struggle to keep on top of them all. If there is a particularly contentious issue to be discussed we can break the 1,000 barrier. Numbers aren't everything, of course (and we've gone out of our way to prevent them being so), but while we are on that subject, it looks like this weekend we will hit half a million comments since we started. Amazing. Thanks to everyone, always.

Special thanks have to go out to RG who spotted that it was the daily thread's birthday today. Way back in August, I noted the date on my calendar of Sidepodstuff, ready to mention it in today's thread. We have since moved house, and the calendar remains folded up on Mr C's desk. We would have missed the event entirely if it wasn't for RG's penchant for looking through the archives.

Still, this way the birthday can be celebrated in its own thread, and I think that is a much better way to mark the occasion. Lukeh created the above picture to honour the daily thread, and really, without each of you, it would have fizzled out a long time ago. Here's to another year of daily thread discussions of pandas, Sidepodspace, iPhone apps, and sausage rolls.