I actually take a different view on this matter, after initially sharing the view of the mods then ended up developing it: To start with: at least by keeping the rule as "No blogs", it's a pretty simple and clear rule to follow. Allowing blogs that can produce discussion then clouds this rule - how is that defined? By who? The blogger, the mod or the community? If your response to this is by allowing blog discussion completely, then you could have a rise of rant type threads. But then when I think about it - it's up to the community to select what type of threads they wish to reply to, is it not? So if a thread isn't discussable, then it won't be discussed - if it is, then it will be discussed. Therefore, there's no real need for mods to really intervene here - the thread rragnaar showed us was pointless - but I see plenty of those types of threads on OT and even on GF game specific boards and they actually turn into discussions from as little as barely a topic title. Have a look around the GF game specific boards yourself and you'll see tonnes of examples where threads like rragnaar shows us are posted quite frequently. The GF mods don't do anything about it and they manage to turn out to be great discussions at the end of it. Essentially, you could argue the current rule enables mods to pre-judge topics, which when I think about it, isn't actually fair to the TC or other users on the board. Why should mods determine what ToU abiding topics can be discussed and what ones cannot? They cannot see the end result. So I'd be open to GS removing this rule. Whatever you do though: do not have a half way rule. It's either you allow blog discussions or you don't (both easy rules to follow) - complicating the matter will only make life harder for users and mods to interpret the rules. EDIT: btw, just to be clear: I support the status quo, but I'm open to the rule changing as well. I don't mind either way. There should be a third option in the poll! :P