@darius This is something I've been thinking about.
It seems that some way to have elevated access across servers would be useful?
For example, my home is Server X, but I have an affiliation with Server Y and can browse its local posts/have some sort of indicator of affiliation.
Please take this with the disclaimer that I've been at this for all of 48 hours and could well have a fundamental misunderstanding of key concepts. :)
@james Yup! Affiliation-based protocols that work across servers are the way to go. The rel=me that I mention in the article is one reasonable current solution, and there are a few others I'd also like to see adopted and will be speaking to their designers