I think we are missing an important sort option on Stack Overflow: The ability to sort questions by recent votes, like in the last week or so.
The "Vote" option is good, but due to the way SO is built, the questions that get the most votes tend to be questions calling for people's opinions rather then requesting help with specific technical problems of the asker. (Ie: "What is the best book...?" vs "Why doesn't xxx compile")
Another issue is that the top voted questions almost never change.
Take "Hidden Features of C#?". 1338 votes, dating back from September 2008. That question is a great question and is going to stay on top of the "Vote" list for years to come, which is fine as we need a way to quickly find the best questions ever.
On the other end, there is no way to see good (highly voted) questions asked recently:
Newest = most recent questions. A question disappears from the front page in a matter of hours, sometimes minutes.
Featured = Somebody paid a reputation bounty. Unfortunately, that means the question will be closed automatically after a while, even if it is not fully answered.
Hot = Question with recent activity. That can be good or bad. There are regularly question with negative votes in this section.
Active = Recent activity. As of right now, the oldest modification in the first page (50 questions per page), dates as far back as 20 minutes ago.
Per my observation, the vast majority of questions never get more than 5 votes, so questions that do should probably be highlighted. However, a good question can and will dive into oblivion in less than an hour unless someone bumps it back to the top regularly.
I think adding a tab for the most voted recent questions would help these questions receive the attention they deserve without any bumping.
In my opinion, a question receiving a lot of up votes and few replies is more "hot" and more interesting than a down voted question attracting the ire of the community.
