Hi,
I have created a culture-oriented wordpress-powered blog. I’d like to hear what you like to see and what you find useful in sidebars.
“Heavy” sidebars (as in “lots of <ul> and links”) are something I usually don’t like. What about you? What is necessary to provide to the user in terms of sidebars widgets?
Regards.
-jj. 
Well I believe your first concern should be usability. Not saying that it would hurt to keep a cleaner sidebar, because I don’t know your content. I think you need to concern yourself with what a user would think on finding their way around and then concern yourself with making whatever it is you have look better second.
Culture is quite a big subject. Can you be a bit more specific what kind of culture you are talking about.
Forget about the “culture angle”. Forget about what my users may expect.
Just tell me what you like to see in sidebars, you as a user, on the blogs that you read
Usually, I prefer reading “asides”, so information that is directly related to the main content.
Related information only, non-aggressive banners will be also fine. LJ is good a sample - they let you choose what you’d like to see aside
Every sites sidebar have to built based on the keywords of categories. For your culture site you can give various cultures , relationship , food, worship & so on.