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 think there's a post somewhere in the following observation, but I'm at a loss as to what lesson to take away from it, or how to present it:
Wherever I work I rapidly gain a reputation for being both a joker and highly intelligent. It seems that I typically act in such a way that when I say something stupid, my co-workers classify it as a joke, and when I say something deep, they classify it as a sign of my intelligence. As best I can figure, its because at one company I was strongly encouraged to think 'outside the box' and one good technique I found for that was to just blurt out the first technological idea that occurred to me when presented with a technological problem, but to do so in a non-serious tone of voice. Often enough the idea is one that nobody else has thought of, or automatically dismissed for what, in retrospect, were insufficient reasons. Other times its so obviously stupid an idea that everyone thinks I'm making a joke. It doesn't hurt that often I do deliberately joke.
I don't know if this is a technique others should adopt or not, but I've found it has made me far less afraid of appearing stupid when presenting ideas.