""By Date" section containing 5 saves from a single user all on 1 page"

I've noticed this too. In the past, we had people resaving things every few minutes to keep their saves on the first page of "By Date". Then a limit on how often resaving bumps each save to the first page of recent saves was added. But there now seem to be some people resaving large numbers of their saves at once to fill recent saves with them, when they haven't actually changed anything in those saves. I'd much rather see saves from a variety of different users, than lots of saves by a few users which reappear every day in recent saves. Different sort orders are therefore a valid subject to discuss.

To me, this suggestion seems a bit complicated, and requires extra user effort and planning if someone is bothered about getting on the front page. I'd rather that effort and planning went into making saves, instead of advertising saves. Sure, having one of their saves on the front page tends to make people happy, but getting on the front page shouldn't be the whole point of playing TPT.

Personally, I think a sorting order that only shows one save for each user (the most recently updated save) might be worth a try, with the saves in order of update time (as in the current "By Date"), but with each user only being able to bump themselves to the top of the list once a day, by updating one of their saves.

However, I don't think it's possible to invent a method that will work perfectly and always showcase good saves. If there's a save on the front page that isn't good, vote down and it will disappear. And as other people have said, if a save is jaw-droppingly awesome and hasn't made it onto the front page, you could link to the save on the forums or on IRC.

If more people are active, more people will be looking at saves, but also more people will be posting saves, so yours will disappear faster. So I would imagine that the number of people who see a save will average out to be roughly the same regardless of when you post it.