There's a saying that goes something like "Measuring the progress of developing software by lines of code is like measuring the progress of manufacturing an airplane by kilograms of mass."
My point today is that, if we wish to count lines of code,
we should not regard them as "lines produced" but as
"lines spent": the current conventional wisdom is so
foolish as to book that count on the wrong side of the
ledger.
"Measuring software productivity by lines of code is like measuring progress on an airplane by how much it weighs."
There seems to be quite a lot of lines of code there.
http://ianmurdock.com/platforms/on-the-importance-of-backwar...
Original ASP.NET blog entry was gone, best I could find.
Oh yeah, that's Moore's Law at work here too!
You're throwing away the top end of the funnel so it's impossible to know whether it's leaky or just completely dry all the way through.
The solution to either problem in those examples is the same. More engaging content will drive more visitors to the site as well as stimulate more conversation.
However I do agree with you in theory about how it's good to keep a log of traffic; with the caveat that it's not used as the primary measure of activity when conversation is end goal of the site.