usually the hardest things to change are those that buck the social current or that simply have to pass a large committee.

Without disputing your premise, I can assure you that's not the case here. I or any of the gods can (and do) often make changes to the site's code without even consulting each other, let alone the wider membership.

If so many of us (virtually unanimous I would hope) agree that this change would be a positive thing, why then is it difficult?

lolwhat? If an idea is popular, it must be easy to implement? Are you not a programmer?

If the platform is at all based on Perl, it should be cinch, right?

lolwhat