2) Along side a link could be its ranking based on say only the top 50 users. This would let people explicitly see what the majority vs. the "elite rationalists" thought - an interesting barometer of community rationality.
I wouldn't do this. The top 50 users by karma score are more likely to be members who make a lot of comments than "elite rationalists".
The controversy meter and using recent votes are good ideas (I wouldn't split it, use only the recent votes).
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!