I prefer Hot to continue its emphasis on recency. I'm not sure if I would derive much value in having it surface old posts, especially if there isn't active discussion in that old post.

That being said, my most used view other than Hot is now recent/comments to see where the new activity is. I wonder if that should be a one-click promoted view, rather than the multiple steps I need to take to get there currently.

Lastly, I do think there should be a better way to surface evergreen content for new users, I just don't think Hot is the best place to do that. The search bar is one such place, but I'm not sure how good of a job that does.

A fundamental question is whether users approach SN as a place to find information (evergreen quality more important), or a place to have conversations (recency & activity more important). I sense that most users are using it for the latter rather than the former.

For the former, it's probably more important to get some more SEO visibility through common search engines like Google. I do notice that some search terms in Google do surface SN on the front page, which is good, but anything that can be done to improve that would be helpful.