Just because I'm setting boundary conditions does not mean I am generally discouraging people from involvement, that doesn't follow. However, it's true that there's an optimal recruitment rate which is substantially less than the maximum possible recruitment rate. Recruitment rates can be deliberately throttled back by introducing noise, posting more rarely, and through other methods.

NRx would be maximally strengthened if it could recruit as many people as possible while maintaining quality, but realistically we can only add a given number of people per week without compromising quality.

I'm fantastic at engaging others by design, I openly offer to publicly debate people, only Noah Smith has taken me up on it so far.

Re: ebola, I've never joked about using it as a biological weapon, I'm just responding to the funny meming that's going on on 4chan about ebola.