As long as it can be disabled like the Reddit one I wouldn't object to it. I don't ever go to homepages anyway, I use RSS feeds

Good call it would have to be optional

Ya that wouldn't be bad. I'm a bigger fan of random news articles though. Have an area somewhere on the page where it puts up a random article from sometime in the last two months. This way you can be reminded of what was happening just a little while ago and lets articles that may have been passed over get a little bump.

I don't like it on reddit, as 98% of the time it is not something that would ever have had a chance to get noticed (but I guess that is the point isn't it !).

I like the idea also; it gives more exposure to new submissions without having to explicitly browse the "new pages" section.

If this is a problem, wouldn't it be better to turn up the gravity on the scoring algo so that fresher stories were on the front page? That plus the /active link seems like a nice combo.

I.E. making the front page fresher could dilute the amount of conversation on a piece, but that could be balanced via the active link.

That is interesting... I guess I don't really feel like the front page is to stale. I do feel like interesting pieces sometimes are overlooked or fail to make the front page. This can often happen if a bunch of bigger news stories are submitted. They rise up quickly and then a smaller but interesting story just passes away unnoticed.

I like the minimalist look of the current site. Adding features like this increases the visual clutter.

This would be an interesting userscripts.

I particularly like scripts like http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/30512 which make hacker news even better.

It's necessary on reddit because the "new" page flies by very quickly, and just a few jerks who downmod everything but their own submissions can control the content.