Thanks, Sean. The key points I saw were summed up in one paragraph:

TalkBoard is a User Advisory Council consisting of members of the community whose purpose is to provide input regarding FlyerTalk feature requests, action requests that fall outside the scope of established policies and procedures, and general user issues as may be directed to them by the FlyerTalk member population.

Conceivably, this could mean doing a little more than what Talk Board has done to date but not very much. (After all, most of what effects us -- such as the TOS -- is within the scope of established policies and procedures.)

This still leaves me wondering why Talk Board and its membership cause such intense feelings.