I've had the same sort of yearning from the time I first came to perlmonks. In fact, one of my first posts was to Discussion, to ask about some more compact, easy-to-scan presentation of a section. (I was asking about SoPW at the time, but the issue applies to CUFP, OBFU, Craft, Snippets and Meditations as well.)

Having lived with the status quo for a while, it's true that the "arguments against" that you cited carry their fair weight, but your counter-arguments make perfect sense (and I think there are more that could be raised).

But then, I looked again at a resource that I've used many times: node_id=6364&user=MonkOfYourChoice -- that is, Perl Monks User Search (where it appears that a randomly chosen person is always provided as a "default monk" -- lovely idea, that).

The format used on that node to list postings is really cool: you can sort by date or reputation or title; there's one line per posting, with just the essentials (the title is good enough in many cases to make "look now"-vs-"maybe later" decision); you can type in how many posts to put on a page, and which row number to start with on the next page you fetch. Best of all, there's a "Next n" link right there at the top of the list.

Might there be a handful of forgotten, low-numbered nodes, already sitting around somewhere, that provide this sort of listing for SoPW, CUFP, Meditations, etc? If not, dare we hope that this sort of facility could be adapted to sections, as well as users?

Even a fraction of that functionality would be sweet -- just list in reverse chronological order, 50 posts per page -- but provide this concise listing format, the "starting at" type-in, and the "Next 50" link at the top and bottom. Oh, bliss!

update: fixed the bad link to User Search -- d'oh. (thanks, grantm!!!)