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:

• The material in your post seems especially important or useful.

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?

• You put a lot of thought or effort into your post. (Citing studies, making diagrams, and agonizing over wording are good indicators of this.)

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.

• Your post is long or deals with difficult concepts. (If a post is in Main, readers know that it may take some effort to understand.)

I don't see this, frankly, and I doubt you do either.

• You've searched the Less Wrong archives, and you're pretty sure that you're saying something new and non-obvious.

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.)