I just did a search through here and didn't find an answer.
But would it be possible to actually auto promote threads which are 'Hot'? I'm not sure what criteria everyone would agree on for being a hot thread, but X views in X hours would be one method. Perhaps there could be a random option or simply any thread which receives X views. I wouldn't want to promote every thread, that seems like it would clutter the portal with useless stuff.
I also second the idea of having an option so promoted threads can be a redirect to the thread, and perhaps an excerpt from the first post. Clicking it sends you directly there unless this is already the default behavior when article mode is disabled?
Lastly, does anyone have this up and running on UI.X 2 which I could check out?