techcrunch engadget nytimes theAtlantic forbes techdirt bbc.co.uk extremetech wired arstechnika

These are all great sites, often with newsworthy content but the problem I have is they are all likely to be on many people's list of regularly visited sites, just like HN.

This also makes it easier to farm Karma by continually submitting links to any breaking stories on these sites.

My suggestion is that any links to these, and similar, sites need to have a "drag" factor attached so that they need for example 3x or 2.5x the comments to progress at the pace of a less "popular" site. The drag factor would increase to some maximum as the sites get submitted more often.

This way a really interesting story from a site with a high drag factor will still make the front page but we would get a chance to also see interesting stories from a much wider selection of sites.