It's just selection bias. If those threads weren't great they wouldn't be linked. A better test would be to use wayback machine to look at a random date's front page and its threads.
Not in the same realm necessarily, but there’s a page somewhere on the site that shows the front page, but only from users with a certain account age. Interestingly, the last time I looked at it, there’s was a lack of a certain topic showing up.