It's all about Clarity of Purpose
What's Google for? It's for searching.
What's BBC News for? It's for news.
What's wikipedia for? It's for assholes to pursue personal agendas quick reference to information...
What's e2 for?
Tough one. We can't just shrug it off with "community" because if that were the case, we'd be better off with some forums and a livechat app.
In any case, in dealing with the Front Page, we need to forget what the logged in (probably via cookie, never sees the casual browser blurb...) user sees completely. Go back in time. Be a newb. Why did you come here?
e2's major advantage is softlinking, as explained before. Building on this, we can say what e2's mission actually is.
It is to provide searchable content which links via human interest rather than relevance. Softlinks can (or maybe should) provide a breadcrumb trail through the database linking article to article purely by what previous explorers have found interesting.
In essence, e2 resurrects the concept of surfing the web instead of the nervous dipping into it that most of us currently go with.
It's not truly random linking. It's not a stochastic formula generatable by machine. It's better than that, because it stores where people went before you.
My mission now is how to reflect that, how to show only that, in a clear, concise and attractive interface.
Screenies to follow.