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In general, Web communities all use the same modus operandi -- new articles start at the top of the home page (or a Group page) and slide down the page when they're replaced with other, newer articles.
This "river of news" eventually spills off the bottom of the page and into the cold, dark depths of your content pool.
But... but... there's some really good content in the deep end of that pool?!
How do we surface that content and make it easy for users to grab if they're so inclined?
Based on what I learned listening to a podcast about the Lullabot site redesign, I started using a module called "Similar By Terms" on one of our client sites. This module uses taxonomy terms to compare the article a reader is viewing to the inventory of other articles on your site. When it finds complimentary articles, it displays them next to the article being viewed.
Think of it in Amazon.com terms. They are the masters of using data about you (what you bought before, what you're looking at now, what others in your neighborhood are buying [yep, they know that too]) to customize their pages and display items you're likely interested in -- and just might buy.
Here's a quick screen capture I made of the block that showed up next to an article that covered a topic about "Vista migration".
This is an incredibly cool way to churn up old (but still worthwhile) content for readers who are primed to read more.
By the way, there are half a dozen other modules that do similar crunching. I did a quick run through the module list (sheesh, that thing is getting long) and dug up a few options for you to check out.
If you prefer one of these other modules over another, please post a comment and let us know why you like it.