I totally agree. Digg, Reddit, and "Hacker News" for that matter, don't actually implement the "wisdom of the crowd". The true hypothesis of a WotC is based on a random survey or sorts. How many people actually look beyond the first few pages of these social news sites, or maybe their friends (or other reputed users) links. Social news is still in a stage of infancy, much like how web search was (maybe is).

Throw 10 random stories to the user on the homepage, let them vote, and the best stories will emerge. What's point of actually showing them the "popular" stories as the first go.