I agree that the Front Page should be limited to really interesting nodes. When over half of the day's nodes end up there, it loses its significance.

I wrote some OO code ages ago and was absolutely thrilled to see it front paged .. that meant more to me than the XP it garnered.

Limiting the Front Page ability to Saints might work .. how about doing something along the lines of consideration, where it has to be nominated to be front paged by a minimum number of saints, say five.