I've been browsing LessWrong less often as of late, and I believe that one of the reasons is because I don't want to get all excited all over a new insightful LW post, only to discover that it's a meetup in a city that I'm not even in.
And for newbies to the site in particular, they're not going to see all the awesomeness of this site if they simply look at the frontpage and think it's a community just for meetups.
I'm sure meetup discussions can go somewhere prominent. Maybe a separate section can be devoted to them.
This is really a problem that needs fixing. Maybe some kind of pool people can put karma in and then is given to the ones who implement the thing the pool is for? Sort of like a bounty.
Edit: do try to come up with other solutions to everyone, I forgot to hold of on proposing solutions.
I believe whoever might design a significant addition to the site would already understand that a post explaining that project when it is implemented would garner significant karma.