Interesting background knowledge that they were supposed to be gay, puts a lot of things into new perspective.
That being said, I don’t really like the idea, I enjoyed them as these unlikely but good platonic friends. I don’t think adding a romantic aspect to them would have improved their characters. For example Garak has many traits that could be interpreted as stereotypically gay, especially within the time period the show was produced. Him being a flamboyant and well spoken heterosexual works better to subvert cliches. Come to think of it, Bashir also isn’t the manliest of men. Which i also find more interesting for a heterosexual character.
I think the 196 community is the originator, though I already didn’t know what they were about when on reddit, I mostly find their posts confusing. From what I understand the (only) rule is that the post title must contain the word rule.