I really like this idea. The biggest bottleneck to getting it off the ground is probably lack of traffic.
People have previously argued that politics discussion will attract the wrong sort of people to Less Wrong, which seems likely to me. One way to achieve the best of both worlds: allow posting of links to Omnilibrium from Less Wrong open threads, with the caveat that all politics discussion is kept on Omnilibrium. This signal-boosts Omnilibrium content without attracting the wrong people to Less Wrong. For example, I could link to these recent Omnilibrium posts of mine from an open thread: Is faster economic growth good for improving long-run outcomes for humanity?, Reconciling Transhumanism and Neoreaction.
To keep things fair, the only caveat is that if you link to Omnilibrium from Less Wrong you should try to editorialize the link as little as possible. Try to frame it as a neutral pointer to off-site discussion rather than beating your personal hobby horse. This way others will be less tempted to respond on LW. And of course remind everyone that all political discussion should take place on Omnilibrium.
Should we experiment with the norm of allowing this?
I'm not seeing quite what experimenting there actually is to do. Linking to Omnilibrium from LW open threads is not currently forbidden, nor can I see any particular reason why it would be discouraged, providing the thing linked to was actually interesting enough to be worth posting in an open thread. For that matter, even overt political discussion on LW isn't that heavily discouraged in practice.
What are you proposing would happen differently depending on the outcome of this vote, and how will the outcome of the vote lead to it actually happening?
(E.g., ...
Two months ago we began testing an experimental website for Rational Discussion of Politics. Our main goal was to create a platform that would allow high quality discussion of controversial topics without resorting to any forms of censorship. The website is now ready and new members are welcome to join the discussions.
Many thanks to all the LessWrong members who have been taking part in this project.
P.S. A note to new users. A key feature of the new website is the automated recommendation system which evaluates all comments and articles based on their potential interest for each user. The recommendation system has passed the initial calibration, but its ongoing performance is sensitive to the number of user ratings per comment/article. So rating posts that you read is highly encouraged.