We could use a more structured system, perhaps. At this point, there's nothing to stop you from writing a post before you're ready, except your own modesty. Raise the threshold, and nobody will have to yell at people for writing posts that don't quite work.

Possibilities:

1. Significantly raise the minimum karma level.

2. An editorial system: a more "advanced" member has to read your post before it becomes top-level.

3. A wiki page about instructions for posting. It should include: a description of appropriate subject matter, formatting instructions, common errors in reasoning or etiquette.

4. A social norm that encourages editing (including totally reworking an essay.) The convention for blog posts on the internet in general mandates against editing -- a post is supposed to be an honest record of one's thoughts at the time. But LessWrong is different, and we're supposed to be updating as we learn from each other. We could make "Please edit this" more explicit.

A related thought on karma -- I have the suspicion that we upvote more than we downvote. It would be possible to adjust the site to keep track of each person's upvote/downvote stats. That is, some people are generous with karma, and some people give more negative feedback. We could calibrate ourselves better if we had a running tally.