I doubt that suggesting a solution before even stating the problem is a good way to start your post.
I would start by quantifying this feeling of LW degradation, before attempting to solve a problem that may or may not exist, or may be a symptom of some other issue. Surely there are a few relevant metrics we can come up with. I have several in mind and shared some of them on #lesswrong, but I'd rather hold off until other speak up, to avoid priming.
There are various people who feel that Lesswrong degraded in the last year. In the same timeframe more and more discussions moved into the open thread model and open threads became weekly instead of monthly.
I suggest to counteract that trend by opening all discussions per default on Discussion instead of opening them in weekly open threads. Having the topics in discussion makes it easy to browse the list of topics and choose the headline that are of interest, even if the thread got opened two weeks ago.