Mine was last year’s pit thread entitled Stupid Cheater Tricks, which went 6 pages, but had over 20,000 views. It also inspired a couple other threads, including a GD thread about plagiarism.
I didn’t expect it to be that big, but apparently lots of people had lots of stories!
The Garfield Where Jon Drinks Dog Semen, probably. I had a feeling it would get lots of views.
Mine would be the infamous “A” thread, which because of a stupid typo on my part, became the most responded to thread in board history with 5000 some replies and over a hundred pages.
Not something I am proud of. :smack:
This is the thread that got me hooked on SDMB. I’d go home for lunch and would read the updates while I ate.
We need more drawn out real life soap opera events.
Oh, and around then was the thread about the Ice Cooler Chest with Unknown contents. Scary stuff there.
My most successful thread in terms of views and replies was this post-your-picture thread, with 23,371 views and 669 replies, but I don’t know if that counts, as its success had very little to do with anything I did or posted.
Beyond that, it was, sadly, this thread in which I invited all and sundry to gather round and mock my haircut…and boy, I sure didn’t have to ask twice. 
Apparently it was the first “Munich” thread on the board that I started at Christmas last year.
Hmm… still only 69 posts though.
So you’re the guilty party!
Actually, Klaatu, that turned into a wonderful thread. OK, it was inadvertent, but I think it’s justifiable to feel a wee bit proud of having started one of the most memorable threads ever. 
I think I really predict one way or another about how popular a thread’s going to be—anything over 10 replies is pretty snazzy, by my book—but after running a search,[/threadpimping] I’m more surprised over my second most popular thread, by replies, about the banning of .50 rifles in California. Jus’ under 200 replies, a bit under 3000 views. I honestly didn’t see that one comin’. :eek:
Fictional Characters You Utterly Loathe seems to be the leader, by replies (209) and views (6069). That probably shouldn’t surprise me so much…there are certainly plenty of loathable characters out there.
I start very few threads, and I even more seldom Pit anyone, so I was mildly surprised to see a recent Pitting garner over 100 responses instead of plummet like a paralyzed falcon. Still, by other standards that’s feeble.
Too me, that depends on the content. The game threads we did in the past, including the A thread, were fairly mundane. Fun and interesting, sure, but shallow, as one would expect from a game thread. And some threads, esp in GD or the Pit, become a never ending argument among just a very few participants, each one stating the same things over and over again. To me, that’s mundane and pointless.
So, if someone has a thread in which a variety of Dopers express themselves in a variety of ways, I don’t see that as feeble. Look at my examples from above. A couple of threads have soem people playing around. Yippee. Don’t get me wrong, they were fun. But those I linked in the next post had people regularly commenting, both in the thread and via e-mail, about how much they were enjoying the thread. So, their post counts were feeble compared to 3K to 5K, but the threads themselves were not feeble. All because of content. Did you enjoy the content of that thread? Did some others? Then it was successful.
Not too surprising given the regularity with which these pop up, mine was a thread about Which beer is best then? with 119 replies.
I started a thread called, 15 Years to Master Salt which was essentially calling bullshit on a claim I heard on Iron Chef, and when I mentioned that the contestant in question was called the “Sorcerer of Salt” people starting entitling themselves, and the thread turned into an hilarioius and completely unanticipated hijack that ran to 159 replies and 7,000+ views.
Some of my faves: Duke of Oil, Prime Minister of Prime Rib, Caeser of Salads.
For me it was my recent Everyone On Earth Will Want To See This Movie! thread. I had thought it might get a few replies and views (I sneakily put “Snakes on a Plane” in the thread title to lure 'em in) but I never thought it would get 'Spotted! (Something I got far too excited over :wally)
My most successful thread to date: “There’s a registered sex offender living in my neighborhood” (177 replies, 5961 views) – considering the subject matter (plus a similar controversy raging on the SDMB at the time) its success was almost guaranteed.
Another recent hit: “What’s the most useless key on the keyboard?” (93 replies, 1983 views) came as a complete surprise. With these MPSIMS/IMHO threads, you can never tell what will take off.
I’m rather bitter, though, that “Jesus Christ: The Musical” sank like a rock.
If it helps, I no longer automatically cringe when I see your username. 
My most successfull thread (333 replies, 13,102 views) was the soap opera about WhyBaby’s early entrance into the world: Emergency C-section and a 23 week old infant. Ugh. (And yes, so far she’s lived Happily Ever After. Cite. )
My next-most-popular thread (303 replies, 11,096 views), and one not all about me, was OK, someone tell me why I should stop panicking. (NSA call database.), which rapidly got way over my head. I got intimidated and stopped reading it somewhere in the third page. Perhaps I’ll try to tackle it later tonight, as a lot of really smart people posted really smart things in it.
I didn’t really expect either one to be so noticed. OTOH, Mexico decriminalizing drugs., which I expected to be a bit more sensationalist and controversial, hardly made a blip on the Dopedar. Come to think of it, I haven’t heard anything about it on any news outlets since then. I wonder if it ever happened.
Fun and games with Mr Austin Wemba - 138 posts, 12,592 views. Looking back, it wasn’t even all that good - it played out in very linear fashion, but people seemed to like it.
The Arrested Development 2 Hour Series Finale, the Historic Posts throughout SDMB history, and Diarrhea in the Jacuzzi threads are probably my most successful. Only the “Historic Posts” one was aided by being threadspotted.
99 Little Known Facts about Cecil Adams did pretty well, but it, too, was helped by Threadspotting.
Happy
Secret Santa bragging thread from December 2003.
I had just gotten a free gmail account from a friend and had a few invitations left over. Since some of the IMHO posters had been so generous and helpful with my questions I figured I’d offer them here.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=260726&highlight=gmail
The result: over 700 replies and 10,000 views.
Thank you aldiboronti but Hamlet should actually get the credit for unleashing the monster.
