Yeah, but then the community would have to reach some sort of consensus about style and values. Who wants us to be bickering about the shear strength of bird feathers (primaries, not down! no! it's the coverts!) and how it should differ from species to species so that THIS one needs a type that's slightly stronger or if we don't agree with it then I'll just make my OWN kind!
I think it would be great and I'd love to help Toady out any way I can, but it would add a lot of irritating problems anyway.
On any other forum, I would agree that this is exactly the sort of thing that would happen. But this is DF: we have a hierarchy among posters that should help settle disputes. I, for example, know damn well that I am a second class forum stooge compared to the hardcore sonsofbitches among us who have beards growing out of their beards in an infinite recursive tree of dwarflyness. I am at best a humble petitioner before their intoxicated might. But, with all seriousness, I think most forumgoers recognize those who aren't talking out of their unwashed, wrinkle-shrouded asses.
Arguments about the strength of cardinal feathers will probably break down into one poster giving what seems to them like a decent set of numbers, a second poster asking if that was loadbearing feathers or down, the first saying loadbearing but then giving what he thinks would work for down, a third comparing said numbers with the strengths for known materials and suggesting corrections, and a fourth (this one a hardcore rawmonkey) picks the winners and craps out everything in raw forms. This isn't like the arguments on the magic system and other such hullabaloo that we keep seeing gangrape the suggestion board... its really rather straightforward.