I don't dismiss it, I actually wrote the text so that would be a bit harsh on myself :) I find it truly interesting as well, but at the same time want to express that some internauts are at times overly conservative about these things.

>> For example, any user could ask for content weighted towards an arbitrary date, like “Show me content to the taste of people who registered in December 2008” or “What do the 1,000 newest users like?”

> That sounds like an incredibly interesting way to navigate a social news site.

Except that votes aren't stochastically independent events - on the contrary, exposure to the first page, which is determined by any vote (not just your chosen cohort), determines most of the votes of a story.

I guess that with that kind of weighting you could perhaps have a different order of the stories that went to the home page, but the stories would still be the same - ie, you wouldn't find all the stories that would have come to the home page in the old days, and were instead pushed out by some kitten-stories.