I've often had half-finished LW post ideas and crossed them off for a number of reasons, mostly they were too rough or undeveloped and I didn't feel expert enough. Other people might worry their post would be judged harshly, or feel overwhelmed, or worried about topicality, or they just want some community input before adding it.
So: this is a special sort of open thread. Please post your unfinished ideas and sketches for LW posts here as comments, if you would like constructive critique, assistance and checking from people with more expertise, etc. Just pile them in without worrying too much. Ideas can be as short as a single sentence or as long as a finished post. Both subject and presentation are on topic in replies. Bad ideas should be mined for whatever good can be found in them. Good ideas should be poked with challenges to make them stronger. No being nasty!
I also think this post is a great idea. I've written 3 posts that were, objectively, not that appropriate here. Perhaps I should have waited until I knew more about what was going on at LW, but I'm one of those students that has to ask a lot of questions at first, and I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to learn the things that I wanted to know otherwise.
Along these lines, what do you guys think of encouraging new members (say, with Karma < 100) to always mini-post here first? [In Second Life, there was a 'sandbox area' where you could practice building objects.] Here on LW, it would be (and is, now that it's here) immensely useful to try out your topic and gauge what the interest would be on LW.
Personally, I would have been happy to post my posts (all negative scoring) somewhere out of the main throughfare, as I was just fishing for information and trying to get a feel for the group rather than wanting to make top-level statements.
I definitely think this is a post that should stay visible, whether because we start stickying a few posts or because somebody reposts this monthly.
I don't know whether we need guidelines about when people should post here, and definitely don't think we need a karma cutoff. I think just knowing it's here should be enough.