Ask HN: The “New” page – bug or feature?

After lurking here for several years, I've come to realize that there's a basic problem with the manner in which this forum works: while posts that make it to the main page usually get up-voted according to their merit, the way they get there seems much more random and capricious, having nothing much to do with their intrinsic merits.

This is because most HN members probably do not visit the "New" page at all, and even those who do, would not browse more than the first few pages of it. Consequently, the first 5 or so up-votes a post gets are somewhat randomly dependent on the amount of viewers visiting the "New" page during its short stint there - before it gets hopelessly buried behind newer submissions, most of them senseless spam.

Hence, my questions: which percent of HN members actually visits the "New" page?

Shouldn't this perhaps be solved/improved by the addition of a "Rising" page - displaying only new posts that have already received an up-vote or two?

I'm mostly thinking of all the important/interesting stories (especially from obscure sources) that get lost, but would have got a serious up-vote had they made the front page.