My first question on seeing this proposal: Why?

What is the problem you perceive? Is changing the default view the best way to resolve said problem?

As I (logged in) write this, here is what appears in the 1-day and 7-day views:

Section	1-day view	7-day view
Perl Monks Discussion	1	1
Questions	4	44
Meditations	0	4
Perl News	0	1
Cool Uses for Perl	0	1
Notes (replies)	24	318
(new) Users	2	17

I am not necessarily opposed to your request; however, as your current post stands, there is not enough information to answer the (I believe) reasonable questions above to decide whether or not a change should be undertaken.

If the problem is just that as a normal (logged in) user you want to see a larger number of days when viewing Newest Nodes, perhaps an option under your Newest Nodes settings might be more appropriate. If you think a user should have a quicker way of seeing a larger date range in Newest Nodes, then perhaps links could provide a quick way to a selected set of ranges (for example, 3-days, 5-days, 7-days, 14-days) in addition to the dropdown. (And if you think there doesn't appear to be enough traffic to interest an anonymous newcomer to stay on the site, then that sounds like something for a longer Perl Monks Discussion post.)

I may very well be in the minority, but I don't believe in change just for change's sake. If there is a valid concern; however, I think the body monktorate would approach the question with wisdom and reason, perhaps even coming up with ideas that may better solve the problem you actually think exists.

Hope that helps.