Most visitors to Area51 will have a strong interest in the development of the entire network. It would be nice to see, in graphical form, how some of these stats vary over time:
Also for each site that reaches public beta, there are currently some stats available on its Area51 page. It would be awesome to see here how these stats evolve over time.
Just to elaborate on what I'd like to see (hence the bounty):
I'd love to see some graphs with all the new Stack Exchange sites overlayed with the number of questions/answers/users/comments etc so that we can see how well our beta sites are progressing.
Turn it into a bit of a competition/game, see if you can get your stats up the quickest, or promote your sites the most efficiently.
It'll also give you a good idea of how your site is progressing in regards to the other sites.
I've gone and made my own using the API. You can get it it from the Stack Apps site here.
(source: column80.com)
Statistics like these would also help to show the relevancy of the platform and therefore help to get people committed or interested into the sites.
OpenId should make it easy to add numbers like
If I look at the graphs proposed by the OP and others, I would like to see graphically enhanced (colored)
I am sure that this statistic would also be a wonderful tool to feedback the investors about the success of the platform SE2.0, without additional effort and paper.
Another reason I would like to see this, is to have an idea what influence the moderating has on these site metrics.
Will closing 'List of X' questions negatively effect the metrics or will it simply not matter?
Having some data to hold on to could at least help us evaluate what we're doing
