Okay- Question for you Cmod: Why do you think that keeping issues at all is a good thing?

Issues is one of those throwbacks to physical publishing. When you have to physically print and distribute, issues are a good thing... but online you can just publish an article when it's ready.

You mentioned how you think "edge" is important, so I would guess one of your arguments might be that a "publish on completion" stream is the exact opposite of edge. However, couldn't you just create artificial edges? For instance, showing the articles for the past 7 days?