Not all of the people who would be making good posts if we had subreddits are making those posts now. Subreddits might nudge them if nothing else. Some people primarily interested in, say, existential risks are probably being driven away by all the off-topic chat on the recent comments page.
The extropians list, in its early days, was a focal point for intelligent discussion about transhumanism issues, and I think it ended up being crucial in producing the thinking of both Eliezer and others like Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg. There currently is no such focal point anywhere on the internet, but a LW subreddit could be one.
In the next month, the administrators of Less Wrong are going to sit down with a professional designer to tweak the site design. But before they do, now is your chance to make suggestions that will guide their redesign efforts.
How can we improve the Less Wrong user experience? What features aren’t working? What features don’t exist? What would you change about the layout, templates, images, navigation, comment nesting, post/comment editing, side-bars, RSS feeds, color schemes, etc? Do you have specific CSS or HTML changes you'd make to improve load time, SEO, or other valuable metrics?
The rules for this thread are:
BUT DON’T JUMP TO THE COMMENTS JUST YET: Take a few minutes to collect your thoughts and write down your own ideas before reading others’ suggestions. Less contamination = more unique ideas + better feature coverage!
Thanks for your help!