I read through the entire long thread, but I didn't see any one mention this simple fact:
When a player is on vacation, and he has disabled polishing for his decorations, then he does not provide guildmates or neighborhoods with opportunities to do anything in his city.
And when a player has only a few buildings, in the beginning stages, they might also run the risk of having nothing at all to polish or motivate, if their decorations were unpolishable.
I never polish decorations intentionally, no matter what, but I do understand when someone is hunting for BPs, and they can't yet afford to donate to the existing GBs, that they depend on a variety of polishable buildings.
I have also heard of players that have put up graciously several decorations of the various ages just to give people a shot at getting BPs from different ages, because they did not need too much extra happiness.
Someone in my guild even suggested that people do this, to increase the chances of getting the needed blueprints. I put them up, but took them down later, perhaps because no one dared to polish the guild leader's hedges, I think, and they were just taking up space.
Just wanted to throw some other sides into this, so the originator of the idea doesn't just think that people are just opposed to something new. I think it is just that sometimes we see things from one side, and have ideas which we assume would be helpful to everyone, but maybe from other points of view, the benefit is much less apparent, or even non-existent.
