I think the problem is not that people are wilfully ignoring it, rather it's just not prominent enough. When I open HN, I am immediately seduced by an interest

I think the problem is not that people are wilfully ignoring it, rather it's just not prominent enough. When I open HN, I am immediately seduced by an interesting headline (or point score) of a frontpage story. I don't have time to make a conscious decision to visit /newest. There's no way it's getting precedence over "12 ways to speed up your Erlang programs with NoSQL". If new and the frontpage got equal treatment, then I'd be seduced by interesting headlines of frontpage and new stories equally. Meaning the good new stories would have a better chance of being upvoted. I wouldn't like to see frontpage and new stories merged into the same list, since a great deal of new stories are spam or otherwise devoid of interest.