Yes, the flood of calendar posts is exactly why I don't follow contemporary main, unless specific posts are highlighted on the mainpage.
The reason it took me several years to start reading Less Wrong after EY left Overcoming Bias, is because it took several years of occasionally being linked here before the main post -wasn't- a meet-up announcement. The current situation of the front page is an improvement, after lesswrong.com stopped bringing you directly to main, but if the front page became a meet-up page again, we'd be back to that problem.
I don't personally see an issue with separating meet-ups out, but the front page is an inappropriate place for them. The front page should be facilitating the introduction of new users to Less Wrong.
this is a chesterton's fence. Can you explain why it is this way? and why changing it would maintain that purpose?
Is a great idea, I can hardly find anything but meetups in main, so I almost never check now.
I like to read posts on "Main" from time to time, including ones that haven't been promoted. However, lately, these posts get drowned out by all the meetup announcements.
It seems like this could lead to a cycle where people comment less on recent non-promoted posts (because they fall off the Main non-promoted area quickly) which leads to less engagement, and less posts, etc.
Meetups are also very important, but here's the rub: I don't think a text-based announcement in the Main area is the best possible way to showcase meetups.
So here's an idea: how about creating either a calendar of upcoming meetups, or map with pins on it of all places having a meetup in the next three months?
This could be embedded on the front page of leswrong.com -- that'd let people find meetups easier (they can look either by timeframe or see if their region is represented), and would give more space to new non-promoted posts, which would hopefully promote more discussion, engagement, and new posts.
Thoughts?