As I have said before (and just about everyone seems to agree) the hot threads are too dominated by one particular set of topics.
My suggestion is that the number hot threads per category (by which I mean things like "Local", "Social Media" or "Google") is limited to two or three. That will allow interesting conversations from else where to bubble up. Yes, the highlighted posts on the front page helps with this, but I think having better hot threads would still be a significant improvement.
