I have just added two new categories to my blog, one is for the most popular posts [1] (as indicated by the number of hits on the permalink pages). The other is for the best posts [2]. My criteria for adding a post to the best-posts list is that it provides some information that is new or some analysis that others do not appear to have performed, that it doesn’t get refuted by someone else (sometimes an idea seems good but someone points out a flaw), and that there is some level of interest in it from readers (based on page hits, comments, and links from other blogs).
Both of these categories may be added to posts some days or weeks after they are published. So adding the feeds for them to a syndication configuration might not be a good idea as they will always include posts that are old. I expect that a typical Planet configuration would never display posts from those feeds.
I suggest that other people consider adding similar categories to their blogs. It will allow readers who quickly browse your blog to see the posts that you regard as your best content and other bloggers in the same space to see what gets the most hits (which is worth-while if you don’t consider blogging to be a zero sum game).
I expect that someone will suggest that I only write posts that are eligible for the best-posts category. However this is one example of a post which I don’t consider to be eligible but which will still be useful to some people.