I'm a little dense and missing the point of this TER board. Can anyone enlighten me?

You are either a raw newbie, in which case I would suggest you read the TER home page and then go to the FAQ newbie discussion board and read a lot of the posts and comments.  Or, if you are just trying to stir up some conversation, I would suggest you ask some more specific questions, rather than question the reason for its existence.  And yes, to answer your question, a lot of providers have something to hide and this board attempts to eliminate those.

.... each group needs some privacy from the other from time to time to talk trash about each other

trash-talking right here, because I can based on separating my TER handle from my hobby activities.  I recently saw a provider that I got into a flame war with on another board, and she said she would NEVER have me as a client.  However, she did, but didn't know it.  She even asked me when I was coming back.  It was doubly amusing to me that she had no clue she was fucking and blowing that asshole from the TER boards, CDL.

You saved me the trouble LOL.  
The question has been asked a few times on the newbie board, but there was only once when Admin actually chimed in with a reply.

He was talking about a completely separate review board here on TER called the "providers with something to hide" board

That section has existed for a few years and questions about it pop up on the board from time to time. One thing I noticed that only has been added in the last few months is that now many of the providers on that list actually have the reason why they are on the list. For example "paid for fake reviews."

He is asking about this:

Threaten to out me as a hobbyist because she didn't like my review is one of the reasons I never give my TER handle to providers. I learned this the hard way when reviewing on another site before moving over to TER.

Haha. YW, just trying to ease your work load a bit.
When I posted it, I was thinking hey I can't believe I beat PS to this one.

Picture yourself sitting at a bar this evening and you enter into a conversation with someone about the World Series (perhaps what one Manager could have done or done differently to effect the outcome of the series. I ask you, what would be the point? Not that the two things are even close to being the same, but the concept is similar.

Right. There's a few other broken rule reasons I've seen there. Which makes no sense to me, that's why I said clear as mud. If they did something like that, why aren't they suspended or delisted/banned? Why move them there? I've also seen women there who have no website anywhere, just buy ads in the malls. I've read in several places that TER requires a web presence or the provider can't be reviewed.

On a TER approved site of course. They don't need s personal website. An ad on an ad mall, a profile on a site like P411 etc. are all acceptable. Remember TER started in 1999. Personal ad papers and yellow page ads were still the really popular places for escorts to advertise. TER was started to review escorts that advertise on the internet. No reviews of steeetwalkers (unless they also have an internet ad) or yellow page or classified ads (unless they also have an internet ad.)

It's a search function in the Reviews section.  You can't go there and discuss anything, as you do on this and other boards here. Back to the Newbie Board for you.

Hey Russ, that was kinda deep and philosophical and a good point, but doesn't really relate to the OP. He wasn't talking about the forums.

In fact, I'm going to take me some now.

I can see clearly now, corn is such a beautiful thing.

That's great. You sound like a fuckin' peach.