First some fundamental differences between now and then:

2001) "Corporate Websites" people were of the mindset :
      "This is our website. We must controll the content"

2011) "Corporate Websites" people are of the mindset :
      "This is our website. We must attrackt people with WEB 2.0"


2001) UF was trying to attract advertisers that balked at
      bad words.

2011) The main advertiser is Google, which is the kingpin 
      of WEB 2.0 somewhat.
      (For example, links to YouTube which is a link to a site
       OFF the main advertiser are verboten)


2001) People where very new to the idea of seeing stuff they 
      wrote themselves on the web. This of course lead to a lot of
      people posting stuff like "Poo Poo" "Wee Wee" "Hahaha" in the
      few open comment systems that were around back then.

2011) That phase now probably happens in kindergarden blogs, which are 
      somewhat unlikely to be of much interest for links on this board.


Which would prompt me to request a change of the rule:

      
Instead of "No links to open comments" a rule to 
"no links to open comments with the chance of turning bad".

For example, I'm a moderator at www.orafaq.com and their comment
system I *know* that there is very little chance of bad comments
even appearing, and when it happens it is modded within minutes.
Of course there is nothing really visible on the site to
indicate *proof* of that.

The same thing with Snates highly interesting links to free range kids. 
He seems to hang out on that site quite a lot, and
I'm pretty sure he can judge if the comments that usually appear
on that site are usually bad or not.

The other thing I would suggest is that people don't cry 
"Oh, Oh, Open comments! Mods! The sky is falling!" if they see 
a site that has open comment, but only when the site 
has BAD open comments.

I know it's the weekend and a lot of regulars are busy with that, so I 
will re-post this, or a link to this (you know, this open comment here)
on Monday.