I somewhat agree. The main reason to not put stuff on the front page is length. This just means that <READMORE> needs to be inserted before it goes to the front page. An automated way of inserting such would be nice but I won't hold my breath nor jump up and down hoping for such.

The second reason to not frontpage is things like uninteresting repeats. But I think we should frontpage most approved articles these days because of the points you raise about the implications of the recent stats.

Another option would be to make it clear on the front page that only "Selected New Questions" are listed and that you can go to "See All New Questions" for more. Hmm, I think I'd vote for that change and keep the frontpage approval process the same. YMMV. I'd probably also add a See All New Nodes link on the front page (besides the differently labeled ones already there).

I'm somewhat for changing the "approval for a section" methodology. We've had problems with nodes not getting approved for their section when they should. Also, I'd like to give people a way to "vent" about a "poor" question w/o running to Nodes to Consider. So I'd like people to be able to vote "unapprove" on nodes. Though handling both whether or not to approve and whether to move something to a new section makes an eligant solution more difficult.

One idea I have is to have the approval nodelet let you select "approve" or "unapprove" and/or select a section and these just get tallied as votes. Posting an article to SoPW counts as 1/2 vote for "approve" and 1/2 vote for "SoPW". To change sections, a different section would need to get more votes. To change approval, the other approval option would require more votes.