Do I have to enable diagnostics to see the logs of the rules being applied to block or approve traffic?

[MrZork 3]

I checked the logs for network protection and they're always empty.  The docs I've seen seem to suggest this is only for logs of network attacks?  I want to see the logs of, let's say, vlc.exe getting blocked by my firewall rule.

[Marcos 5,070]

A list of connections recently blocked connections by the firewall can be seen in the Firewall troubleshooting wizard where you can unblock desired communication with a few clicks.

All blocked communication is logged in the Network protection log with the minimum logging severity set to Diagnostic in the advanced setup. However, it should not stay enabled for longer than necessary to troubleshoot network communication issues, otherwise it could generate huge logs.