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I occasionally post despite fears of disapproval, but then immediately after posting my anxiety levels will become so uncomfortably high I delete the comment. Perhaps some people have noticed me doing this, but if they knew how anxious I felt I believe they would understand. It's kind of neurotic...
I also have some social anxiety as well. A usual amount, I think. And then I tell myself that posting on Less Wrong (which is not the 'real world') would be good desensitizing training. I think it has helped some, but occasionally it has the opposite effect. I once had a minor panic attack at a conference moments before giving a talk -- not because of the talk, but because I realized I wouldn't be able to delete a comment or a post I just submitted and thought I might regret.
Incidentally, the chances of me making a comment (and leaving it) doesn't correlate as much with my perceived quality of my comments as much as with my anxiety threshold at that time. Since I'm not very good at gauging my anxiety response, I tend to always rewrite my comments more and more conservatively until the first idea is all but lost. Then I'll submit the comment just because I spent so much time on it.
(Please don't respond that I probably shouldn't bother commenting; I kind of know that. I'm curious if the whole thing improves over time.)
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Is there anything useful you can say about anything we could change that would stop that from happening again?
Well... I would say that it was one part not knowing what to expect - was I just going to mingle in this house full of extremely bright people for a few hours? I wasn't sure I was going to know what to do with myself.
It was one part doubt about my own.. uh.. qualifications for being there. I haven't commented much on my main account, nor made a submission (I hope you'll forgive me for using a throwaway account for these comments). I'm a college senior whose done well in every class (from lit. to programming to organic chem. to math), but I don't yet have a passion, nor area of expertise, so I wasn't sure that I would be able to contribute much... or even last long (i.e. be able to carry on) in a conversation with the opinionated and up-to-date scholars there.
I guess the advice I would give would be this: cater more to shy / socially anxious people. Maybe have a snippet you can paste at the end of every announcement, just summarizing what goes on there and who all is welcome, what the ecology / environment is like, etc. Tell people what the sufficient conditions are for their being welcome.