I'll just add - I'd gather that every time a thread is bumped with a new post, it gets probably on average around 700-2000 views. This probably occurs regardless of whether that post includes a pic because it just means the thread is opened (viewed) to see the latest post.
Well known threads that are continually bumped undoubtedly have a following, and that following may grow or remain relatively stable over time. That is something you could track using the view/post ratio i.e an increase in the view/post ratio means your "fan base" is growing. Likely there is a curve of sorts here, where the popularity of a large thread grows for a time until it reaches a saturation point (where the view/post ratio levels off and becomes a constant). Or, its possible that the view/post ratio never grows much at all but remains about the same as it was from day one.
But also, as I mentioned above, the ratio seems dependent upon key words in the thread title which undoubtedly guarantee more than the usual number of views. The thread author is unimportant. The actual pics posted are unimportant. Taking for example the thread going by the title above: "Naturist's daughter shocks school by baring it all at prom party" - it would be a fun experiment to actually start a thread with this title, include NO PICS, and see how many views it gets. Based on the fact that it contains all those "key" words like "School", "daughter", "party" etc, my guess is that it should rack up in excess of 4000 views for that one post.
No, I'm not actually going to try this....
Klondike