Warning: a guy on a BBS in 1998 said my hit counter was tacky, and he was dead right
Back then I ran a personal page on Angelfire about my comic book collection and had three counters stacked on top of each other. A regular on the rec.arts.comics board, handle was NightOwl77, posted "one counter is a badge, three is a cry for help" and I sat there staring at my CRT for a minute. I pulled two of them off that night and the site honestly looked cleaner. Twenty something years later I still keep my layouts to one widget per corner because of that one post. Did anyone else get design advice from a total stranger on a message board that actually stuck?