I've noticed that the people most available to try an activity with will often be bad choices for a beginner to accompany, because they're selected for being too intense. This seems particularly common with outdoors activities.
I don't know if this is relevant to your experience.
Not in this case. We had a couple experienced people and many novices.
This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for November 1-15.
The poll earlier this month seems to be sufficiently in favor of maintaining the current schedule that extra votes are unlikely to change things much, but if you'd really like to register your opinion, you are welcome to do so here.
Thanks to cata for starting the Group Rationality Diary posts, and to commenters for participating.
Immediate past diary: October 16-31
Rationality diaries archive