There, and again after the last post. But I saw them on the same line as the topic. On seeing a latest post I hadn’t read, I could tell who was the o.p. and who was participating in the thread and that could influence whether I opened it. And I saw Views between Replies and Activity which could tell me how interesting others were finding a topic (e.g. 2 replies and 100 views probably means the thread is not that interesting). I’m pretty sure I didn’t make all this up in my head. 
But if no one else has seen these things…