Is community cohesion something to aim for? Ideally, rationality should be the baseline, not the marker of our particular community. As recent threads on gender have suggested, there's room for quite a few different communities which share core principles. Ideally, lesswrong would be one of many places where rationalists of different stripes feel comfortable. Of course, the question is whether it's better off huddling together for the moment in hopes of reaching critical mass or if we're already past that phase.
Community cohesion may be critical to the success of the rationalist movement.
That was a good question. The reason cohesion is important is because one wants to avoid a "divide and conquer" circumstance. If nobody feels comfortable posting on LessWrong and goes and posts on 100 other blogs instead, it's possible that the movement will simply die out.
Of course it is also possible for that to have a benefit, too: If 100 blog authors successfully advertise their blogs, it's possible that they'd get a lot more readers than if they were to post sol...
Ever since Eliezer, Yvain, and myself stopped posting regularly, LW's front page has mostly been populated by meta posts. (The Discussion section is still abuzz with interesting content, though, including original research.)
Luckily, many LWers are posting potentially front-page-worthy content to their own blogs.
Below are some recent-ish highlights outside Less Wrong, for your reading enjoyment. I've added an * to my personal favorites.
Overcoming Bias (Robin Hanson, Rob Wiblin, Katja Grace, Carl Shulman)