* articles with disproportionately few comments per upvote are sometimes the most interesting
if you can get low-content articles off the front page faster, and more interesting non-pop articles visible longer, it would probably attract the hacker community more and the pop community less.
misc ideas:
* remove all system incentive to submit links
* change UI to increase visibility into user history, so that reputation becomes even more important, and low-quality activity sticks with you for a while
* fix the new page! incent people to upvote new links, or a creative UI hack like a single new submission at the top (e.g. "sponsored" on reddit)