I think we should get rid of "main" and "promoted" .
Right now there's four tiers: open thread, discussion, main, and main promoted.
at least once a week I see a comment that says "this should be in main," "this shouldn't be in main", "this should be in the open thread," or "this shouldn't be in the open thread, it should be it's own post".
I think the two tier system of open thread/discussion would suffice, and the upvote downvote mechanism could take care of the rest.
If this change is made, the karma multiplier for a discussion post should also be increased. Right now making a 10 point discussion point gets you 10 karma but making a 10 point post in Main gets you 100 karma. Which doesn't make much sense given the reality of how Main & Discussion are being used (virtually identically: basically you post to Discussion if you're a person with a humble disposition). I'm in favor of having a solid multiplier for discussion posts, 4x at the absolute least, to encourage more toplevel posts. I would also disable downvoting for users with less than 100 karma to encourage more contributions... Less Wrong is such a dinosaur at this point there's little reason not to try this kind of radical change.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
Notes for future OT posters:
1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.
2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)
3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.
4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.