I hadn’t seen that view before.
Side Note: It is weird and feels inconsistent that /top doesn’t have user icons but /top/weekly does when they are the “same” view.
The problem is that most forum users want to see what the latest and greatest thing is… and new topics really fit that bill. That’s why regular forum users reload the home page all the time.
New forum users need to see a list of interesting topics that draw them in. So that’s where hiding the boring stuff makes a lot of sense, and yes, the Top page does accomplish that… at the expense of the regular forum users who would probably dislike it. (as a regular user here, I would probably not use it on Meta very often)
The Top view should heavily bias towards new / latest content to work as the home page, especially on a smaller forum.
For example, on HTG the Top item is 6 hours old, but a recent conversation is lower on the page. So we’re biasing heavily towards total posts as opposed to latest and greatest.
I dunno. I see your point, but it feels like an incomplete solution that works great for new users, would probably annoy the regulars, and would definitely make new topics wither and die.
Where the Top view really excels is for somebody that hasn’t been on the forum in a while. They can see what happened while they were gone. Once they are “back”, though, they are going to want to use the Latest view instead.