That's right. I'm working steadily in that direction, though I know it's hard to see it.

The separate "dashboard" is one of those things rooted in WordPress's origins as blogging software. A blog is a production rather than a collaboration, and usually there's just the lone blogger toiling in the back room to publish it. In a forum we work in public, though, so your vision of an integrated user interface is a much better one.

That WP is meant for single users is also why at the moment you have those broad permissions. The next phase of the project for the U is to add fine-grained permissions so that you "can only edit your own stuff". We're gearing up to use this software with large groups of people, so what would be just a convenience here is an absolutely necessity there. Stay tuned.