Originally Posted by MSPeconomist

I suspect that many views in the new Smoking Lounge forum now are the result of curious FT members checking out the new forum by opening a few threads almost at random to see what's there and get a sense of the tone of the discussion. The real test will be how the statistics look after some time. I'd be reluctant to draw any conclusions based on forum activity--however that is defined--just after a new forum has been created.