I agree that increasing viewership to good questions and driving users to sites they may wish to join but might not naturally visit are both good goals. I would like to mention a third goal:

In the....other corner, random intermittent positive reinforcement

Studies have shown that random intermittent positive reinforcement can be more effective that purely positive reinforcement. This means that a reward that is given for good behaviour, but only sometime and to varying degrees, is more effective than a proportional reward. This is perhaps because people are always chasing the next "big score".

So what has this got to do with hot questions?

Hot questions are (one can only hope) good questions with a good answer since the upvotes are a major part of what drives them - So the positive part is taken care of. 

However, it is rare to get one of your questions/answers on the "Hot questions" list, and I haven't been able to detect much of a pattern (except that the questions seem to be more easily understandable to a general audience and are high quality) - So the intermittent random portion is taken care of.

And I think we can all agree you are heavily rewarded for having a good answer/question in the hot questions list.

My experience

When I got my first answer on the hot questions list it was the most exciting Stack Exchange had been since the initial honeymoon period was over. These rare periodic large rewards are key to keeping long term expert users loving the site.

Conclusion

I'm not saying that random intermittent positive reinforcement should be the main goal of the hot questions list. But it is an additional positive effect to take into consideration.

What is the Goal of "Hot Network Questions"?
We know that Starfleet academy offers different majors according to its needs. And those are some of the named courses to have been shown that many officers took according to their majors. So my question is: Is there anything in canon or non-canon which specifies what are the basic minimum courses that starfleet officers have to study to prepare for their possible role as future commanders or captains? Is there special training for those who want to assume command?
