even though many of the discussions are endless loops of the same discussion. It can be annoying for the old-timers, but new generations may need to discover things for themselves.

This would be a good thing to encourage - though I'm not sure that allowing submissions from elsewhere is the best way to achieve it. I assume that the "Rerunning the Sequences" thing that was going on a bit back was an attempt at this - but the reposts didn't seem to get much attention or discussion. For various reasons, people are less receptive to content that is old - heuristics imply that it will be less salient on average, the author is less available for feedback/interaction, the timing for absorbing new information takes more discipline, there is less discussion, etc... It would be better to have posts which rehashed the main ideas in the sequences, which would solve this problem. Additionally, it would add new perspectives, insights and refinements - it wouldn't be completely redundant.

Another issue that LW has is being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. This is really off-putting to me, and most likely to other users as well. Encouraging redundancy would alleviate this problem since people would be able to gain status/distinguish themselves more easily without being contrarian.

Idea C: Allow and encourage posts on "political" topics in Discussion (but probably NOT Main).

I really dislike this idea. It takes effort to read political stuff properly, and also drives away new-comers. There is more than enough discussion on politics in the blogs surrounding LW, if that is something you want to discuss.