In a combined community, I would fold Rigorous Science into the science category and add guidance to the effect that if you want particularly rigorous answers, say so in the question (same as you would do for any other special requirements or constraints). This makes the questions more casually visible and reduces confusion about where to post. It also frees up some room to have a blog if the community wants one, without having six categories (which starts to become cumbersome in the UI). I don't know if the community wants a blog, but some participants did in the past.

What use would a blog have here? What would be posted there?

The Worldbuilding community on SE had a blog for several years. It fizzled after things started going downhill at SE, but this is what made me think that folks here might want one. (I'm not pushing the idea; it's up to the community.) The original blog had a mix of fiction, articles on topics ranging from astronomy to geology to constructed languages, and occasional posts about the community (highlighting interesting Q&A etc).

Ah, had no idea. That’s in Medium, so separate from the site itself, though. Not sure what the pool of articles would look like if present on the Q/A site itself, and how quality would end up, and trying to prevent duplicate content. But sure, why not try it.

Right, it was separate because SE wouldn't support an on-site blog. (They used to, but when WB asked for one they said "not doing that any more, try Medium" so we did.) Here on Codidact, if the community wanted, there could be a "blog" category like on Meta, and the community could shape it however they want.

Who was allowed to write blog posts for WB on Medium, and how was quality assurance done?

Anybody could submit posts and there was an editorial board. (Any editor could approve and schedule a post.) There was also a chat room (on SE) where people could discuss ideas or work in progress. I don't remember anything ever being rejected; spammers and trolls didn't find their way there.

Any idea what would be a good way to guard against low quality content, and keep the blog as a high-quality piece of content? Perhaps a new ability required to create a blog post that would have to go through review to be released fully? So the post starts out closed, and all closed posts in that category stay hidden from everyone except for those with a reviewer ability for those posts? Maybe "Vote on Holds" or "Curator"? And to get that first ability, you'd have to have created some Q/A first? This might end up requiring coordination in chat for reviewers, which is a bit unfortunate as we use Discord.

Categories can restrict posting somewhat (as on the Meta blog, which is limited to staff), but it's not tied into the abilities system, unfortunately. (Abilities came later.) There's a concept of "established user" in the category settings but I'd have to look up what that means. If the community wants a blog, I think we can moderate it suitably, but that's a discussion that should happen in a more visible place than this comment thread and after there's a suggestion to add a blog. My comment about a blog was part of category taxonomy, so to speak, not an actual proposal.