Thanks hookbill.
This is a great forum site, and the following is not directed at this site but at the status quo...
A long time ago, we had Bulletin Board Systems (BBS).
They were all independent, with their own user base, like these forum sites are today.
Then, there was an ability to network them (i.e. messages posted on 1 BBS could "propagate" to other linked BBSes, e.g FidoNet, etc.)
so that multiple user bases could inter-communicate without having to login/register elsewhere.
Then came the Interntet and Newsgroups, and people left the BBSes for Internet Newsgroups, and the BBSes died.
Now we have forum sites, that basically behave like web-enabled BBSes.
Did we just go back to where we started from?