Cripes Ian, don't be dense.

If I wanted to send Walt a private message or an email right now to ask him if it was OK for me to put up an old video clip of his 2WD Xterra getting 4 feet of air under the front tires shortly before he traded it in, how do you suggest I go about it?

If there were a nice alphabetized/searchable list of users like this:
http://www.nissanoffroad.net/messageboard/members.asp
it would be a cinch. As it stands here, the only way for me to do so is to click the PM or email link above one of his posts, or click the PM or email link in his profile.
To do either currently requires me to find one of his posts somewhere on the board. Finding one of his posts is a crapshoot because you can only search for a member's posts specifically by member number, which just happens to be only available by finding one of his posts or viewing his profile. See the conundrum?
My only remaining option is to randomly search for posts that have "walt" somewhere in the post body, either if he's thoughtful enough to "sign" his posts with his name/handle like I do, or if someone else replies to his post and addresses him in the process, but I'd also find dead-end threads like this one with no-good hits.

So yes, a member list isn't useless by any means. That, or the ability to search for a user's posts by name rather than member number.

Capiche?