This may be an unpopular opinion but if internet forums and message boards are any indication I don't want some omnipotent group of software developers making decisions for the industry as a whole. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and all that...

And perhaps more relevant to the thread, I know two types of people who talk about their salary, people who make a lot and people who make a little. Their is just so much bias present to me to give any credibility to these lists. Take the google spreadsheet where the employee was fired, do you think the engineers who thought they did better then their peers in negotiations listed their wages?

I'm not sure I follow but you may be misunderstanding me. I'm definitely not advocating for an omnipotent group of software developers making decisions for the industry as a whole. I can only assume you've seen that advocated for somewhere else and are equivocating it with my post?

At it's simplest level I think something like the SAG or profession sports players associations. Kept out of the way, stars can rise, and there if you need them. It'd be useful to be able to have an organization that I can say "Hey, I'm interviewing at Github, based on your verified compensation data that you keep, what can I expect?"

The fact is, our employers share and buy each others compensation data similarly for use in negotiations and when setting compensation. It only makes sense that the parties on the other side of the table do the same thing.