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.
I agree. The strict moderation and frequent downvoting (that restricts visibility) limit the potential for a lot of interesting threads. Given the very low frequency of new threads, allowing more wouldn't be washing away the good content or anything. Reddit, which this site mirrors in form, thrives on turnover of content. Encouraging more threads instead of "post it in the open thread" would help.
Are we reading the same site? LW is not "strictly moderated," relative to e.g. a mainstream subreddit.