With more and more alternatives appearing to Lego which also increase in variety and even surpass at times Lego quality, why focus just on this company for a brick building community? I for example have been badly burned by Lego’s handling of the Mindstorms brand and there are more compatibility broken product lines from Lego.
Is posting other brands alright here? Will it lead to unpleasant conflicts from Lego, if their brand name is used?
To me, especially when it comes to MOCs, it’s like an art form to work within the limitations of what the branded medium provides, or with digital MOCs, what the branded medium could hypothetically provide. Using offbrand or custom pieces to embellish a LEGO structure feel like “cheating” in a way to me, both in the artistic aspect and the engineering aspect. I’m fine if people want to make communities for Megablox for example, or communities for any or all building blocks brands (excepting ones which support plagiarists like Lepin), but a forum for a branded item/medium should be almost entirely built with brand. There’s also what’s called a generic trademark, wherein a mainstay brand’s name becomes a common term for a type of product (ex. “Kleenex” in lieu of “tissue”), that I’d want to avoid since it makes it harder for clear communication among hobbyists and worse for the brand (and in this one case, I generally do like the brand).