I agree - this game is sorely missing tools to help connect players for specific objectives. They started to address this with the Linkshell Community site, but it fell far short of the mark and never saw any further development.

The great strength of FFXI has always been the community. The balanced-group-required nature of the game forced leaders to emerge; to organize people and events. It seems that, over time, these leaders have become harder and harder to find. Many of them have settled in with a comfortable group of friends and no longer interact with strangers. Others have moved on to other games with most of the population. It's likely that the "dumbing down" of XI has resulted in a different kind of new player - the kind less likely to step up as a leader to get things done.

All this is to say that XI's greatest strength - the community - flourished because there WAS no "signboard" system. With the community eroding, however, perhaps it's time to change direction on the player-event coordination front.