Happiness Engineering

Yes - in fact, I did not even consider this aspect when I made that comment. My bare minimum standard for main as opposed to discussion is "would I actually link this to a friend, describing it as a helpful, reliable source of information?" (Other posts are helpful sources of information and discussions, but this is my lowest possible standard.) Furthermore, I personally think karma should be a reflection of the user's impact on the site, not the impact on the site of the awesome blogs that the user follows.

On a related note, I'm also against meetup threads being on the main page, though I haven't had opportunity to mention that before as I feel it would be destructive to mention it on any given meetup page. Those are often not viewed by the majority of the site to whom the meetup location makes the post irrelevant, and it'd just kill the meetup mood for me to flame about them "not deserving" a place on main. It gets ridiculous when half the front page is meetups. Posts like "How to be Happy" and "Being a Teacher" should be the first thing visitors see, not just external links and the sixteenth freaky meatosphere interaction this week, especially since there are editors so caution in spam prevention shouldn't be an issue.