Stuff falling off the end of the New list before it has time to get voted onto the front page is a perennial problem. It doesn't seem any worse now than it was a year ago. Which is not surprising, because the factor driving the rate of new submissions, the number of users, is also the one driving the rate at which things on the New page get upvoted.
Are you suggesting, by extension, that if there are 300 submissions an hour (instead of per day) and 24 times more users that it will "all work out" and a set of similarly interesting things would pop out?
Quite possibly. When you submit something that's already been submitted, it counts as an upvote. So although things would fly off the New page too fast for most people to see most of them, interesting things would still get enough upvotes to get a toehold on the front page.
Actually I think the front page would be marginally more interesting at the consequence of many more stories going unnoticed. I'm also not convinced that it is possible for there to be 24 times more stories -- is there really that much relevant news out there? With 24 times more users I think we would see 5-6 times more submissions.
Have you experimented with, instead of a queue, a randomized subset of the links posted over the last 24 h?
The random strategy may give an even chance to new submissions, regardless of what hour of the day they were posted. Would remove the ability to wait for a specific time to make a submission for the purpose of making it score high faster.
I don't know what possible negative consequences the randomized subset could have.
