The purpose of this is twofold.
1) To make it so that some things which, to date, have been pulled will no longer need to be pulled. This should make the posters of such things happier, and make it so that those who would enjoy those things happier.
2) Help keep the main forum less cluttered.
And this should be done without watering down the main forum.
Blog posts are very similar to vanities, but had not been treated as such since they were 'published' elsewhere. The new forum will allow us to treat them more like vanities. The substantive posts in this category will still be welcome in the main forum. It would be a mistake, for example, to move Wretchard's incredible analysis of the Iraq fighting out of the main forum.
Also, some blogs have attained a status which is comparable to the web presence of major publications. Instapundit comes to mind, as does Lileks. With almost half a million visitors since December, I think the aforementioned Wretchard falls into that category as well. Little Green Footballs. The Volokh Conspiracy. I am not talking about the one line entries by these monsters of the blogosphere, but rather the longer posts they do which are essentially self-published articles. These are not going to be moved.
Similarly, certain writers and pundits have their own blogs. Roger L. Simon. NRO's The Corner. Mickey Kaus. These professional writers blog posts are generally not going to be moved by me.
This is obviously going to mean that there is some subjectivity involved. Some are going to say the moderators are not being consistent. That is all understood, and to some degree will be true. Despite this, the end result will still be a tidier, more on-focus main forum with fewer threads flat-out pulled, and as such will be an improvement over the status quo.
Thanks, LM