Just before this latest change, I had been noticing stories staying on the front page for a LONG time, and this recent change restores what to me seems like the normal behavior of a few months ago.

For information, my browsing behavior on HN is to land on the front page (now several times a day), look down about one screenful on my computer, and then follow the link to the new page. I try to upvote stories on the new page soon after submission if they look like they have strong hacker interest or strong delight the mind qualities.

Any chance of publishing several front page algorithms and letting users set a preference for one? Or even better somehow letting people suggest/test custom ones?

I agree. This may be a sign that either a restricted scope of HN needs to be enforced, or an algorithm needs to be written to correlate the interests of users. Neither is pretty, but the alternative is a saturated Hacker News.