OZBusDriver,
While I can agree with what I think is the overall thrust of your post, I feel there could be some misunderstandings in it that could benefit from clarification:
One aircraft has maintained an altitude for the previous 30 seconds which indicates a separation standard was in progress.
This is incorrect. Outside controlled airspace, there is no such thing as a separation standard. I know what you mean - that one aircraft appears to have been positively doing something about the known conflict - but separation is an ATC thing. Pilots don't apply it. Perhaps a better term is "deconfliction."
Both pilots given and maintain an altitude till verified passage? Both pilots receiving positive vectoring?
As you've described them, it sounds like you mean that these actions could have been directed by ATC. The two aircraft were in Class G, where ATC do not and cannot provide positive control instructions. ATC can (and must, and does) provide traffic information and can, if both aircraft are painting on whatever surveillance technology is in use in the area, provide
suggested actions, but they can't provide positive control in uncontrolled airspace. Pilots get told about conflicts, and how they deconflict themselves is up to them.
IFR pays for a service in Class E and above.
This is not quite correct either. IFR pays for and receives a service in Class G airspace, too. The difference is that as described in AIP a Class G service includes traffic information only, not separation. Nothing precludes the ATC from suggesting solutions to impending conflicts (and indeed an ATC's duty of care demands it in many cases), but they remain suggestions only. In Class G airspace, pilots are responsible for avoiding other aeroplanes.
THE desired outcome is a separation standard in IMC in ALL airspace within the ADS-B coverage map.
I think I know what you mean, but it isn't a separation standard that is the desired outcome. It's having aircraft operate safely in relation to each other without hitting. In CTA, this is done through the use of control instructions intended to establish and preserve separation standards, but in uncontrolled airspace, by definition, there's no requirement for a clearance and there's no requirement for pilots to follow ATC suggestions, so there can be no separation standards.
Semantics? Maybe, but I think an understanding of exactly what service pilots receive in which class of airspace is an important thing that is perhaps not as widespread as it could be.