> written for the purpose of writing, not for the purpose of getting lots of viewership

I've never really bought this line of argument. People who "write just for writing" don't publish. They write it in One Note or Evernote or Tiddlywiki or plain old text files on their laptop. They don't sign up for Wordpress accounts (or even worse, spend hours configuring some static site generator) and publish it.

People publish things because they want them to be read. Having no indication that they are being read is, understandably, discouraging for people who are publishing things.