As a rather new reader, my impression has been that LW suffers from a moderate case of what in the less savory corners of the Internet would be known as CJS (circle-jerking syndrome).

At the same time, if one is willing to play around this aspect (which is as easy as avoiding certain threads and comment trees), there are discussion possibilities that, to the best of my knowledge, are not matched anywhere else - specifically, the combination of a low effort-barrier to entry, a high average thought-to-post ratio, and a decent community size.