Relevant to which part of the group exactly?

- Those who comment? (These are hopefully looking for good content/topic for which to discuss)

- Those who lurk? (It should not matter for this group, they will just skip over the topics if need be.)

- Those who up vote? (This group in terms of the front page will push it to top and may not necessarily even read the article)

Since the group is actually all of the above, then the long tail new users (1 year and less) [I am assuming it is a long tail, it would be great to have data to back this] will be dominant and no matter what you do once it massively popular (not necessarily on topic) it will remain on the front page.

My personal workaround is to assume the users who signed up earlier in HN maintain a certain scope and flag and vote as appropriate and roll with news.ycombinator.com/classic for the next few days until it dies down.