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Hello John.

I believe you are onto something here.  What you describe is what I would
like to see.  I believe an important part to this is, even if people in
their own games have their own terminology and so on, when engaging in a
common discussion, a common lexicon of terms is used to describe this. 
Also, working on ways for players to combine different works from the past
would help.

Let me chime in a sec from an IAGO perspective (PLEASE don't take this as
namedropping as a plug).  IAGO (read here myself would like to see IAGO do
this) would like to elevate the chess variant community by having different
variants on the IAGO World Tour, and also to have a recognized 'Chess
Variant Player of the Year' and also have a universal ranking for variant
players, across a pool of games.  Besides this, IAGO would also like to
have the variant community be able to input in the future of chess, by
having the common works on here lending to the discussion.  All this is
done for mutual benefit to the community, like variant pieces being
produced commercially, and variants being taken as a legitimate form of
chess.

So, for all this, IAGO (again read me seeing what I believe IAGO needs to
do) would like the variant community to come together and push things in
this direction.  Have something out of this efforts that can be used, and
IAGO get behind it.  In this, go for what has been spoken on, and get stuff
happening.