It may be useful to codify beliefs in particular as "what we believed in (May of) 2011" rather than "what we believe". That seems to me like it will cut down on a lot of the overhead - there's much less implication that someone should believe any particular thing on the list, and it's more obvious that 'so what?' or 'yes, because...' are good responses to 'you don't believe [particular thing] any more!'.
I'm not sure that beliefs are an appropriate thing to have in a list of LW norms in the first place, though. There are some obvious ones that seem to belong here, like the belief that believing true things is generally likely to be helpful, but other than that, well, changing beliefs is what we're about; our norms should be something a bit more meta than that.
Perhaps add a version number with a datestamp?
Rationalist taboo comes to mind, and actually updating based on evidence, and generally changing one's behavior to match one's beliefs. That last one seems to require a bit more give and take than just handing someone a set of rules, but I think that's a good thing, and we could streamline the process by coming up with a list of common beliefs and behavioral implications thereof (cryo, for example).
I took the categories of the norms from this post you made earlier. The 'updating based on evidence' seemed m...
Edit - Barring a major surprise, this post should be regarded as a worthless artifact of my impulse to do things instead of talking about them. I apologize for any time wasted on this, and would recommend ignoring it unless it is for historical purposes. I'll just stick to things I'm less bad at from now on.
This article will be edited as people post and discuss.
I believe that we need to have a clear, concise statement about the beliefs, practices, and taboos that it is rational to hold, and that we already hold as a group. To be clear, this is not an attempt to make new norms, but an attempt to codify the ones that we already hold and to get a rough estimate of the popularity/importance of each.
Core Rational - skills, meta-beliefs, and habits that enhance personal rationality
Social Rational - norms that enhance working in groups rationally
LessWrong Norms - norms for dealing with Less Wrong specifically
Common Knowledge - basic, useful beliefs to build on
Please post one phrase at a time and then give your reasoning under it. Once any idea has a common consensus, I'll add it to this article in the appropriate list.
Edited - Removed the word 'should' as someone has suggested a better phrasing. Edited again - category change, remove extra now-useless examples.