"I think I've pissed off enough people with my views lately..."

Isn't that what good art is there for ?

I think somewhere on this planet you can even find a person that is gravely offended by a Bob Ross painting, God bless his kind soul.  :-)

As for rigging, you can pretty much link anything to anything else with the dependency editor.

Want to have a joint that follows an arc while the limb bends ? No problem with animated joint centers. (And no problem for clothing to follow that joint, either)

Problem is just, crude'n'crappy is more economic in the Poserverse.

Simply rigged figures with simply rigged clothing is usually enough to keep the unwashed masses happy, so that's what everybody's doing.

Meh, if I just wanted to make some $$$ with Poser I perhaps would do the same.

But the fame and glory is usually into doing a thing as good as possible, and people have tried to improve what's there since the Poser 3 days. (And a lot of these ideas got later copied for the mainstream figures)

 

As for your figure:

I forgot most of them fancy latin words I learned in school about the human body, so I won't go into details like Conny did.

Let me just say that "IF" you're going for "real" realism, the torso and hips look very thin compared to the rest to me. (See attached render)

Personally I only use a single set of reference pics when I redo a figure to make sure that everything matches to everything else.

But so far it looks like you're on the right path. Good work ! 

:-)

BTW, I wouldn't spend too much time perfecting the non-weightmapped rig unless you need him to be fully backwards compatible.

When I weightmap an older figure, I usually have to throw out all of the legacy rigging except for the joint centers to keep cloth compatibility. It really doesn't matter if the old rigging was good or bad. The time I need for weightmapping is pretty much the same.