BTW, I am listed as a member of forums I have never subscribed to, and cannot, for the life of me, find the ones I would like to subscribe to. I realize some of this may be temporary "glitches", but I'm certain I'm not a Vet (either in the animal dotor sense, or having served my County) - or can someone sign my name to these forums without my permission? What gives?
Until there are more forums, and until there is a better interface to select forums, any forum you click on will get you an automatic membership. At the moment the membership is meaningless. When I implement "My Forums" and show in the sidebar only forums you've subscribed to, I will convert the membership lists to subscription lists, at which point you can unsubscribe to remove the forum from the sidebar.
Basically, I am collecting this list because when I do turn on the forum subscriptions, if you're not a subscriber to any, all forums would disappear from your sidebar. Which could be very upsetting if you weren't expecting it. :-)
After that is all implemented, only posters on the forum (or people who have explicitly joined a forum) will be listed as members. And in that case, membership will determine access to the forum-- that is, forums will have their own administration, moderators, and ban list.
Think Yahoo Clubs/Groups, or Delphi Forums, etc.