A year ago, I published this post and Jays in the House was born. An answer to ongoing commentor frustration when Andrew Stoeten moved his site to The Nation network (and it's not lost on me that today they're launching a complete site redesign), this was designed to be an "after dark" site - a place where the community that had come up around Andrew's writing could hang out.
In the past year, starting with TimD there have been 15 writers who have published at least one post. Disqus doesn't want to tell me how many comments there's been but there's been 481 posts, none of which to my knowledge have had less than 100 comments. With many of the game threats getting over 1000 (the wild card threat being the busiest post at 3247), and most of the regular posts being somewhere between 200-500...well, someone can do that math. (Today I'll pass 23,000 personally and the majority of that has been here.)
Ya'll talk a lot.
There's been engagements, weddings, new jobs, funerals (speaking of which, tell your loved ones to let us know if something happens to you - we want to know), anniversaries, birthdays, wildfires, music shares, poetry, trash talk, ribbing, spouses popping in, happy days, down days, and a US presidential election. There's been a ton of baseball talk. There's been rocky times and personality clashes but thankfully they've been few and far between (and hopefully all resolved). The trolls have been few and quickly vanquished.
My intention was to create a comfortable place for people to hang out and build the community. I wanted that community to continue being a bulwark against the reactionism and nihilism of a large portion of Jays fandom. Looking at what we've accomplished together I feel we succeeded.
So bring out the virtual bar and let's party!
I have some people to thank:
Thank you to Andrew who brought us all together initially and was very supportive of the idea of starting this blog so that the community could have a place to hang out. (It saddens me that he hasn't embraced JITH and that things have gone down the way it has.)
Thank you to Joanna who refused to let me write for Hum and Chuck and told me to start my own blog.
Thank you to GSMC who stepped up to buy us our own domain when Blogger decided to completely confuse Disqus. (And yes, I know I need to renew it!)
Thank you to RADAR who early on took on a supporting role in running the site and continues to serve in that capacity. Especially thank you for whipping up link posts when something needs to go up.
Thank you to all the writers. It's been a joy giving you the opportunity to develop your voices. And those of you who have expressed interest in writing but haven't done it yet, jump on in! The water's fine. Now that we've hit the year mark we qualify for Blue Jays Aggregator so we'll be needing even more great content. Let yourselves shine!
Thank you to the mods. It's been reassuring to know that there's almost always someone around if things get nasty and you have had a large part as to why things have gone as smoothly as they have. If you want to mod (as far as I'm concerned there can never been enough) let me know!
Thank you to all who have donated using the link. I continue to rely on your generosity. (There's a monthly subscription and a one-time donation button on the right hand side.)
Thank you to all who used the Amazon link to buy Christmas presents and books. I was able to buy two items I really needed with the commission. (The search box is also on the right sidebar or you can click here.)
And mostly, thanks to all of you - not just those who comment but also those who lurk (I know you're out there!). You are why JITH is still here.
