systems taking stats by URI are stupid... just on vb.org, there is 3 versions of a hack to make false stats...

a very good example of false stats is christianforums.com ... is 3rd on the list of Big-Boards.com ... it have about 10 millions post and 1 million threads that are faked in the index file... no need to be a genious to understand what it does... would be 8th or 10th without these stats... foolishly, the company who bought it related their info on these stats...
(and for the ones who ask "how do he know..." ... i played with the cables there!)

the problem with all these topsites is that they are completely useless... google do the best job possible by ranking your site based on keywords and visits... number of members is pointless if you just have an OffTopic forum; they register, post one day and never visit again... same for content, you can have an engine like Ico-Content and fool everybody because the engine create new users and new threads/replies based on answers.yahoo.com ... real interaction... people are fooled by that --- i can tell, i'm the one releasing the engine...

it's easy to fool any stats...