Love them or loath them, comments and the comment threads are a major part of our online community on LJWorld.com, as well as on our sister sites, KUsports.com and lawrence.com.

As a group, our sites are approaching an important milestone: their 1,000,000th comment. Since 2003, we’ve allowed comments on one item or another, whether they’re stories or places or events or videos. And in those roughly six years (the first comment I can find dates to June 2003 as a comment on Zen Zero that’s no longer visible at the request of the business), we’ve accumulated nearly 900,000 comments.

The pace of comments has only accelerated in recent years.

In fact, we just hit comment 800,000 in January. If that pace continues, we can expect to hit one million right around Sept. 30.

And we’d like to do something to celebrate poster number 1,000,000. We’re looking for your ideas.

Should we send them a book that contains a record of all of their comments? How about a T-shirt with their winning bit of wisdom? Or, maybe, we should give them some other sort of prize. What would you want?

As a brief trip down memory lane, here are some other milestones we’ve hit over the years.

Comment 700,000, in September of 2008. LJWorld.com poll.

Comment 600,000, in May 2008. LJWorld.com story.

Comment 500,000, in January 2008. LJWorld.com story.

Comment 400,000, in August 2007. LJWorld.com story.

Comment 300,000, in February 2007. Lawrence.com blog entry.

Comment 200,000, in August 2006. LJWorld.com On the street.

Comment 99,999 (because comment 100,000 was removed), in February 2006. LJWorld.com On the street

As I compiled that list, I was amazed at how many of the posters of those older comments have been posting comments on the site for so long. And the volume of comments by some users also amazes me. merrill, sunflower_sue, I’m looking at you.

By the way, do you have any predictions on who will have comment one million?