However, the window for even a popular link to remain on the front page nowadays continues to shrink. It's akin to the "attention span" of the site dropping. It has its pros and cons but shows that the system that fit the audience in a certain way in the past no longer does so (at least, it does not yield the same results).
My personal and subjective judgment is that this certainly becomes a bad thing at some point due to the lack of cohesion between users' experiences. Instead of a large share of the user base sharing a similar site wide experience, instead we only share knowledge within threads that we happen to see and participate in. There are, then, entire "shadow" discussions occurring in other threads that cover exactly the same topic. Fragmentation.
