I have the power to frontpage nodes since some time already, but I still feel I haven't quite grasped when to do it and when not. Most of the time I don't do it, since I figure somebody else will be doing it anyway if it's a good node :). Other times, there are excellent nodes which aren't being frontpaged by anyone, and I wonder whether I should frontpage them or not. Searching also didn't really give me a definite answer (not even How to use the moderation system, which answers the question in a rather general way). The one rule I have come up for myself is that I take care not to frontpage nodes I reply to (in order to avoid a conflict of XP-interest).

So I guess my question is not: Which nodes should I frontpage? but rather: Why should I frontpage a node? What is the agenda behind frontpaging? Is it

For myself, I am leaning towards the second agenda. I feel that there is no need for every good node to be on the frontpage at some time. Most people that look at the Monastery Gates are probably anonymous monks or people just dropping by perlmonks, so the rational thing would be to display nodes that feature intelligent questions and discussions. I'd even rate a clever question higher than one that might be appealing to a larger number of people, also because I feel it is quite hard to guess what might appeal to everyone.

However, I am curious to see what other monks think about this issue.

In reply to Why should I frontpage a node? by crenz

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