Make a Welcome section that's clearly visible to first-time lurkers, and more helpful to them than the About page. PLEASE.

I think that the welcome threads are an important boon to new users, but unfortunately they're impossible to find as a lurker- the current fashion is to hope that someone notices that commenter X is new and says "Welcome to Less Wrong- check out the welcome thread!"

Unfortunately, there's a lot on the welcome thread that I think would be really helpful for someone to check out before they get to that point; and worse, much of the time a person's first comment is something that will get downvoted heavily for a reason they'd have known if they'd seen the welcome thread, and instead they end up in a flamewar and depart in a huff. THIS IS BAD.