If we could get on some of those regular lists, that alone could be huge. The rationale seems good to me. Sort of like a vortal. Maybe the first featured posts section could be made a bit smaller, on the top of the right side, taking up not more space than would preclude being able to see the start of the other RHS content in the first screen for most users. Personally I've bookmarked the recent posts page and just view that, but I like the idea of having descriptions under the topic title - sometimes there are interesting subjects that I might pass over initially because it's not clear what they are about.
Many users do tpk.
It has gotten so busy that I took it off the logger since it would just fill it up. I'm not trying to make the hp a substitute for it - just an introduction. I may skip the se news tracker, but I wanted a bit more foot traffic both ways. Sort of like a vortal. I also have been doing this for awhile.