I use Google Reader, but you're right. There isn't enough information in the RSS feed to make it really enjoyable to use. You have to judge what you want to read based solely on the title. One thing that helps, for firefox users at least, is the "Better GReader" extension. It lets you open the link in the article header in an iframe, instead of a new window/tab. This makes perusal of the actual article much faster.

One other useful feature for the RSS feed (beyond the current rank) might be the top comments on an article, instead of just a link to the comments page.