I like the idea of showing page views, for the same reasons TheMaster99 mentioned. It can be very unsettling to not know whether your interest check is going poorly due to a poor idea or a lack of views.

I also want to put my vote in for a draft system. It can be very useful, if you don't want to outsource post writing (and, considering that this is a website [i]for writing posts[/i], it's not doing its job right if I have to outsource post writing).