My take is something like “it’d be better to have an open section, but for various reasons the open section is not going to be top priotity for awhile, and meanwhile, we have a pretty decent proxy for ‘what is valuable enough to be on the front page’*, which is karma. If people don’t think this is that valuable, it’ll quickly fall away, and if it turns out to be filling an important niche, it’ll stick around (or, the people who care about it can know to look for it)”
My take is something like “it’d be better to have an open section, but for various reasons the open section is not going to be top priotity for awhile, and meanwhile, we have a pretty decent proxy for ‘what is valuable enough to be on the front page’*, which is karma. If people don’t think this is that valuable, it’ll quickly fall away, and if it turns out to be filling an important niche, it’ll stick around (or, the people who care about it can know to look for it)”