How gnarly is the reddit/lesswrong codebase? $5000 worth sounds terrifying to one with a shaky, Learn Python the Hard Way knowledge of programming and very basic familiarity with html, css and sql. But I'm probably going to be taking 4 hours a day five days a week for a month this summer to try and make myself hirable as a junior programmet this summer and work that valuable would make an awesome portfolio piece, paid or not. It would certainly make one a shoo in for Hacker School.
Some people who work professionally with Python found it too difficult. I tried to find someone who would be able to make a few small changes so that I can use it for my website... but at this moment I believe that rewriting the whole thing from scratch would be at least 10 times easier.
Various people (including Konkvistador who has been talking about it the most) have launched their blog More Right
"A group blog, More Right is a place to discuss the many things that are touched by politics that we prefer wouldn’t be, as well as right wing ideas in general. It grew out of the correspondences among like minded people in late 2012, who first began their journey studying the findings of modern cognitive science on the failings of human reasoning and ended it reading serious 19th century gentlemen denouncing democracy. Surveying modernity, we found cracks in its façade. Findings and seemingly correct ideas, carefully bolted down and hidden, met with disapproving stares and inarticulate denunciation when unearthed. This only whetted our appetites. Proceeding from the surface to the foundations, we found them lacking. This is reflected in the spirit of the site."