I'd view them more like a clustered-condition akin to this sort of thing, where you need some varying strengths of some of the content conditions to activate (not necessarily saying it as simple as a single threshold that they all contribute to, mind you, nor am I saying that those are the only relevant properties.).
Frankly, I don't think these nutrition posts score that highly on any of those counts, though. I mean, it obviously doesn't discuss core LW topics, and you've said as much. Going through the others:
Well, it's not useless or unimportant - Taubes is a moderately big name in the nutrition discussions I've seen around, and with the paleo folk I've seen, and there probably are plenty of people giving him more weight than they should, but it's not a especially important thing around here is it?
It's good writing, but it doesn't seem particularly high-rigour. I'm aware this might change with future posts, but you can't blame people for not considering unposted articles. If this is the case, maybe a reason to combine posts in the future.
I don't see this, frankly, and I doubt you do either.
This might be closest. I haven't done the requisite searching, but I doubt this has been gone over before, and while I haven't read Taubes, enough people seen to like him that it may well be rather non-obvious. However, it's not mind-blowing, and with nothing on the other criteria... let's just say that if I were given this list and had to choose based solely on that, this would be solidly in Discussion.
Now, I'm extremely sympathetic to the claim that these criteria have not been what the Main/Discussion distinction has been made by in the past, and I agree that there should be a discussion about how that distinction should be made in the future. I agree with much of what has been said about the growing necessity of encouraging good new content (which I do consider the nutrition series to be) as well as discouraging poor content.
If I was to decide the distinction, I think my preference would be some kind of minimal standards, including something along the lines of the bulletpoints, as a threshold for entry (such that weaker versions of them are necessary, or at least very close), and after that, the only bar should be quality. I'm not saying it should be automatic, but posts with karma above a certain level (say, 20), should need a specific reason not to be promoted.
(Just my 2 cents. This comment was written straight through, so I'm responding to more than just this above comment. sorry about that - it would've been a pain to split it.)
I'd view them more like a clustered-condition...
This seems very plausible on a descriptive level, but if it's right it's a bad thing for the LessWrong community. Human concepts natural drift towards being defined in a clustery way, but when you're trying to run a community clear rules are extremely valuable.
Near the beginning of this year Wei Dai asked why certain people don't post to LessWrong more often, and Yvain replied that:
But Kaj disagreed that this was the actual standard:
This raises two questions: what is the real standard, and what should the standard be?
Because on the one hand, it's not clear Yvain is right, but on the other hand if he is right on the factual question, that standard seems way too high to me. It would suggest that, as John Maxwell says in the same thread, "The overwhelming LW moderation focus seems to be on stifling bad content. There's very little in place to encourage good content."
The wiki sort-of answers the factual question:
But this isn't an entirely unambiguous answer: how many of the five "factors" does a post need to be in Main? Furthermore, it often seems that the "real" rules are significantly different than what the wiki says. Yvain's perception may be incorrect, but I think there were reasons why he (and presumably the people who upvoted his comment) had that perception. Also, Eliezer recently explained that:
This makes me wonder what other poorly-publicized rules there are in this vicinity.
As for what the rules should be, I'm going to limit myself to two general suggestions:
Finally, whatever standard we settle on, I think it's really important that we make it clearer to people what it is. Aside from the obvious benefits of doing that, I've found that trying to navigate the unclear Main/Discussion distinction is itself often enough to make blogging at LessWrong feel like a chore.
Edited to add: In terms of karma I'm currently the top contributor for the past 30 days on LessWrong by a wide margin. I managed this in spite of the fact that I'm in the middle of doing App Academy and have no time (this past week has been an exception because vacation). I take this not as evidence of how awesome I am, but as evidence that way too little quality content is being posted in Main.