Rather than force Monks to constantly reload the Newest Nodes page, how about having the site put a notification in the Chatterbox when new questions are posted? Since a lot of functionality has sprung up around the chatterbox (IRC, xml clients, etc.), I suspect questions would get answered even quicker this way.
There's already a RSS file which lists the newest questions in Seekers of Perl Wisdom. With a bit of modification, this could be a good nodelet. That way, it's not distracting in the Chatterbox to people who don't like it, and the people who do want it can make it available.
Good project for someone interested in the Everything code. Anyone interested enough to volunteer?