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MySQL has a long history since its birth 18 years ago when Monty Widenius and David Axmark started it.
Planet MySQL started in 2004 and all its history is archived.  Let us dig in it.
It is always good to look back at the past to get some lessons for the future. Here are the 20 most positively voted blog posts since Planet MySQL birth. By positive blog post I mean the one with the biggest positive number of votes versus negative ones. So inside this chart you have false positive which are also very controversial subject ( lots of + and lots of  - with a majority of +).

Planet MySQL is like military archives that you can open after some time when passions have cooled down  (it might not be true for everyone or for every subject ;-))

First column is the excess of plus vote versus negative ones.
61     / 2009-12-21      What do MySQL staff think of the acquisition?    - Ronald Bradford
38     / 2011-03-08      The MySQL Council addresses the public bug database issue   - Giuseppe Maxia
30     / 2009-12-30      Save MySQL save the world   - Mark Callaghan
27     / 2010-10-12      Welcome SkySQL!   - Gary Pendergast
25     / 2009-12-29      Save MySQL by letting Oracle keep it GPL   - Sheeri K. Cabral
24     / 2011-08-09      Santa Clara MySQL Conference 2012: Unity or division?   - Kaj Arno
22     / 2011-08-10      Call for disclosure on MySQL Conference 2012   - Giuseppe Maxia
22     / 2010-10-19      Using MySQL as a NoSQL - A story for exceeding 750000 qps on a commodity server   - Yoshinori Matsunobu
20     / 2011-01-13      Temporary files binlog_cache_size and row-based binary logging  - Chris Calender
19     / 2010-01-03     Tales of the Trade #2: The Oracle-Sun deal   - Shlomi Noach
18     / 2010-12-15      MySQL 5.5 is GA!   - Oracle MySQL Group
17     / 2011-02-21      Where have the bugs gone?   - Mark Callaghan
17     / 2010-09-29      The MySQL swap insanity problem and the effects of the NUMA architecture   - Jeremy Cole
16     / 2009-08-04      XtraDB has been commited to MariaDB   - MySQL Performance Blog
16     / 2010-07-09      Using EXPLAIN EXTENDED / SHOW WARNINGS to Help Troubleshoot Inefficient Queries   - Chris Calender
16     / 2010-09-28      I need a new keyboard   - Domas Mituzas
16     / 2011-08-10      What is happening with the MySQL conference?   - Michael
16     / 2012-08-17      (less) open source   - Mark Callaghan
16     / 2010-08-28      MySQL 5.1 Plugins Development Published   - Andrew Hutchings
15     / 2011-02-22      Oracle introduces new levels of sucking to new versions of old software   - Monty Taylor

First kudos to Shlomi who wrote 2009-12-21 : "Ronald: you will remain #1 of all times for long time to come!" This was a good prediction as this blog post is still number one. I love  Tales of the Trade #2: The Oracle-Sun deal where this prediction happened.

Second lesson learned is not to trust the internet. For example  MySQL 5.1 Plugins Development Published  does not point any more to where it should. This is unfortunate that  there is nothing like  UUID  URI. Internet memories are not garantied : all MySQL DBA knows that : do backups 🙂 And  "MySQL 5.1 Plugins Development" remains an excellent book even if the pointer is gone.

This also illustrates the ability of a crowd to make important  choices  : "I need a new keyboard"  got a very good ranking. I really hope Domas that you got your new keyboard. Is it wireless ?

Some question should be hard as it seem they remain unanswered :  Where have the bugs gone? was raised  2011-02-21.

Some titles can be misinterpreted : Oracle introduces new levels of sucking to new versions of old software . That is a good lesson if you make book reviews. You should not just read the title . What sucked for Monty Taylor at that time is not what sucks for us now.

Some question do have an answer : What is happening with the MySQL conference? Well, It is taking place in April in Santa Clara but it is now called "Percona Live". It could have had a different answer and in the future it might have another different one. Who knows ? Shlomi you who made a good prediction  : Do you have any prediction, hint, advices ?

Enjoy 🙂