the high quality standard, heavy use of neologisms, and karma penalties for being wrong might be intimidating to newcomers

This is both why I don't participate much and why I keep coming here anyways. I want to read things that are written by people who are smarter than me. For me (and I suspect for some other lurkers, though I should be careful not to generalize prematurely), a wider range of participants could be a turn-off -- assuming they'd only be as insightful as I am, or worse. I'm not an expert (yet) and many of you are.

I would, on the other hand, enjoy more efforts at synthesizing and re-explaining the most important LW themes for beginners. Whether this takes the form of a FAQ, or some sort of general Q&A board, or just some nice short summaries of the most important sequences, I would enjoy the reading.