I'm saying that he wouldn't have rented out a bar in Portland for an 8th anniversary party, or paid the bill for 67 parties worldwide for the 10th anniversary (the two times I met him in person) unless Metafilter was pretty fucking successful. There's usually a couple Metafilter meetups somewhere in the world every week!

I do not think he would have been successful if he'd spent much more time on the codebase (it's Coldfusion!) instead of attending to the community and steering it into helping itself.