[ivanhoe]

What to you describe quickly grows into full-blown recommendation engine.

And IMHO the beauty of the old-school chronological/category organization over the recommendation engines is that it's super simple and predictable, making it a lot less stressful to me, as it's not constantly trying to push your buttons, playing with your FoMO instincts and engagement metrics. If I don't feel like reading something now, it'll still be there in 2 weeks, I can find it easily if I wish.

[Zak]

Recommendation engines aren't all bad. I think one of the keys to making it good for users is to derive recommendations from stated preferences rather than supposed revealed preferences.

That is to say a good recommendation engine would not use viewing, replying to, or otherwise interacting with content other than using a button that says "show me more like this" as an indication the person wants to see more like that. This is, of course not compatible with short-term profits for a site that monetizes time-on-site, but could work with such a profit model over the long term.