Well, I use it for all the reasons Daniel says. I need it to find the member numbers; and, okay, I like to see where I, and others, stand in the post hierarchy of the CF.

I don't see how it could logically be a privacy issue - I could find out the same info about the person by clicking on the little sunglass icon above any of their posts. All that the directory lists is member name and number (public), post count (public), location (public, user-input, I could say I lived in Tibet if I wanted to), occupation (user input, I could say I was Speaker of the House, and I'd probably be better at it too), and interests (it is nothing private that I am a lighthouse/Land Rover/ocean liner geek).

All of these fields are user inputted, and when you put them there, you (hopefully) see that it's going in your public profile. All the directory does is take the profiles and turn them into a database list. It does not reveal my home's GPS coordinates, my social security number, or my passport photo. Nobody's going to track me down and whack me with the Collector Forums Member Directory - there's much better ways to figure it out (maybe illicit) if you cared that much (God I hope nobody does). And besides, they'd have to register here to see it in the first place.

Basically, as some others seemed to affirm, there's more pluses than minuses to the directory...and trivial as its uses are, I already miss it. I gotta see how many people are "ahead" of me every now and then.