I personally lost interest in stats and went more for "reality show"
meaning that 50 members who post regularly and a forum with a helathy post regularity and groowth means more groth than numbers on a button.
My stats on alexa for my top best website in my posession dont look good but i get number one ranking for my top 5 chosen keywords and at least a thousand visitors a day who read 3 to 5 pages.
The website makes about 150 bucks a month on adsens and the same with other afilliates too.
i now post about 2 times a month only to keep it going

What realy is working for me now is being a member of blogged.com, blogcatalog.com and yahoo mybloglog
i get involved in the discussions, rate other people's websites and make friends posting to their shoutboxes.. it brings me loads of traffic

also my readers comment and post their stuff.
Important stats to watch are how many members have joined and how many are posting
one good idea is to disallow posting of urls until a member has made over ten posts
this induces members to contributer content without spamming
which adds to the quality of a website or forum