I think there could be a counter at the bottom of the Forum homepage to count all the threads in the Forum. Just an idea; I have no current opinion.

Or, there could be a popular thread feature/page.

There once was a "largest threads" feature at the bottom. Some of these also turn out to be threads I don't want to focus attention on, like "asking for Gmail invites" kind of threads :)

The biggest thread ever is...

Google's Da Vinci Code Quest Started (2,389)
http://blogoscoped.com/forum/27053.html

The overall number of threads is 6,491 so far.