According to a post at BasuGasuBakuHaku, 9rules decided to unravel.

Tangentially, Hung touches upon the spontaneous discussions in blogs. Although he shows good examples, I think he's a bit optimistic. We are not well connected yet. Sometimes I think that I'm the master quoter and linker (at least of AB). Most people do not blog to react to bloggage elsewhere; most of the material consists of the classic episode blogging, editorials, and reaction to outside news. It's not necesserily a bad thing, orginal content rules. But the discussion tends to happen in comments for some reason, and I do not have a sense if Anglo-anime-blogosphere evolves toward blog-to-blog discussion. Maybe it's something Impz can measure for his thesis.

UPDATE 2007/11/10: Here's an example of what 9rules was:

The fact that it ended on a ballot together with Kos and Slashdot tells us that 9rules was positioned purposefuly as "community" from the start, and people behind it had connections to win the name recognition among those in the know. The fact that it lost so badly tells us that its creators had no idea what they were doing. You cannot create a "community" without a guiding principle.