There's been some discussion of how to improve the structure of LessWrong at the site software level - for example adding subreddits or modifying how main and discussion work. One roadblock to this that's been mentioned is a shortage of programmer hours. I'd like to volunteer mine.
I recently finished a course on web development in which, among other things, I build a Reddit clone using Ruby on Rails and Backbone.js. It's been several months since I've written any Python, and I'm somewhat wary of the time required to get familiar with the LessWrong codebase, but I think think the time would be worth it for me: it could potentially improve LessWrong a lot and would let me tick off my "have contributed to an open source project" box.
Of course, before any of that happens, there needs to be some agreement on what changes we think would be a good idea. So... discuss.
EDIT: For context, it's been suggested that part of the benefit of subforums is it could defuse debates over "what topics are appropriate for LessWrong." We could even have an "off-topic" subforum, a common feature of online discussion forums - I think bringing the format of LessWrong more into line with what's standard on other websites could help newbies be less confused here.
There already is: how many people follow/starred bugs on the bug tracker. If you want to help, just look at the most vexing bug and work your way down the list.
Newbie question: looking at the issue list, not seeing how to tell how many people have followed / starred a bug. Or am I looking at the wrong page?
Also, my impression is the places where there are big potential gains are not so much in little things where the correct fix is obvious, but bigger-picture things that are potentially controversial. I see on the issue tracker there are various things listed as "authorized" or "accepted," I assume that's a way for the powers that be to mark which proposed changes they want, but what's the difference between them?