Upvote to encourage more people to visit New Links on Hacker News
I had once suggested that the main page be woven out of a combination of popular + new, perhaps 50/50:<p>1. popular<p>2. new<p>3. popular<p>4. new<p>This injects a lot of noise into the front page, because most of new is noise, but it helps.<p>Another option is to front-load popular stories, then have 10-20 "new" items at the bottom of the page. That way the front page remains highly salient, but anyone who merely scrolls more will also see a small chunk of new. So 1-30 popular (as it is now), then 30-45 new (making the frontpage longer).