BuddyPress.org

i think the problem your having is the fact that p2 is not a “buddypress theme”

like in the main theme how it has a large widget area and 2 small ones, and also has a BLOG tab where the main blog is

the problem your having with p2 (and any other standard wordpress theme) is the BLOG tab is displayed on the main page rather than a large widget sidebar, as the recent blog posts thing is actually a widget, if you put this widget in your p2 sidebar you will see a direct comparison between the 2

currently you cant have a p2 “theme” that aggregates ALL blog posts like the buddypress widget does,

all the users will be posting to the main blog if you want them to use p2, and if you do then the current skin should be fine? it was designed to show comments

im sure you could add some nice jscript to add collapsing comments? this would probably bring better functionallity to your site if you didnt want the comments taking up the whole page?