As an added note, there have been some comments made about something like it in the new UI, on the .COM side of things.
The intention on the .com sid has been to incorporate a blog-like interface relatd to articles. Given the lack of use of the journal facility, I think I will expriment with a couple of variations on a theme and then do a poll to determine what the community wants to have.
If teh journal is not being used then let's not expend a lot fighting spam in it. Just remove it as a failed experiment. An experiment that fails still gives us answers so the effort was not lost.