I won't hide I am rather conservative person and usually don't like changes - cause I have observed in my internet surroundings (mostly in my country) that they usually lead to the worse... You can laugh at me or whatever you want but my most important reason for not wanting blogs is really this "block". Little example - I work for an online newspaper and last year we underwent a great change of design... The changes should help it to be more modern and attractive and more friendly to the readers (like better system of discussions and options for more activity) but according to the readers' reactions and when I talked about it with my colleagues and friends it was just a failure. Sometimes sites just want to be so modern and "great" that they in fact overdo it... So I am afraid.
I really love aarin, although last time my RL doesn't allow me to be so active anymore but still it's an important place to me where I like to return. And I really wish it to be a warm and growing community of ppl. And I appreciate a lot that the amdinistrators and such ppl are trying to make from it even a better place (yeah, there are even changes that I do welcome...)
But I am just afraid that with too many changes and new features the original idea could become lost. No, aarin is for me not a place only to download anime or manga, to tell the truth I almost don't download from here. But as for myself when the Social Groups appeared I kinda stopped to write into the similar threads. I am not telling I am the center of the Universe but some ppl may feel it the same way. The same goes for VMs... Since the new features eat so much time, I stopped visiting almost all other sections and concentrate mostly on replying VMs. I don't feel it's the ideal state though but as I said, I don't have time for everything. But when I look at it, it really gives me a bad feeling. This way aarin could slowly become a place where everybody cares about his or her profile page, photoalbum, visitor messages
and blogs and hardly contributes to the aarin society in general...
I accept that this vision is probably too dark but as I said - I am conservative, I like well tried things and warm atmosphere. I would be very sad if this would be replaced by some hyper-modern atmosphere soooo similar to other places outside aarin. Aarin was always special (and from what I know not only for me) compared to other sites/forums. And it was not about the features but about the community and the atmosphere...
But as I said in my previous post - if there is a majority of ppl wanting them, then why not... It's not a case that would lead to the end of the world...