I noticed I was getting side tracked reading Hacker News, checking back, reading articles, comments, etc. It felt like my productivity was being hampered so I created a simple web app to receive the most popular stories in a daily email.
I would like to do this for some subreddits I check too often as well. Maybe it could also be done for RSS feeds, using comment, Facebook like, and Twitter mention counts to determine which articles are more popular.
I actually love it when a community has this type of problem: Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup. And it's awesome that folks on HN are so well equipped (and willing) to offer real solutions/options rather than just whining and arguing about it (an outcome common in other communities I have belonged to with this type problem where the right skill set for addressing it was not common).