A two column hacker news?

An extra column clutters the homepage and adds no functionality to what a simple click on 'new' (which is the most important link, right next to the brand name) would also do.

If it is the case that too few good articles arrive on the homepage, since everyone is ignoring the new ones, then the algorithm should be changed. But I don't think that is the case at all.

As an extra, I like reading HN on my mobile phone. And with the current one column design this works very neatly. An extra column would complicate that. You might handle that with CSS media queries, but I still think it wouldn't be elegant.

I made a quick mockup. Is this what you had in mind? (Warning: not a design person) http://i.imm.io/jQMl.png

Such a thing might be useful. Don't know how much an auto-updating feed would impact the very non-live vibe I get from HN, but it'd change post distributions and such for sure. The feature I'd personally love to see is the ability to collapse chains of comments without using an external script. :)