It would still be an option to merge the portal and hamnetdb... Hamnetdb is much more capable when managing subnets, and it is open. There is an issue with scalability (it always shows you all the data it has when first opening a page, before you have applied a search filter, which really loads older computers), so there may be surprises when all of the world's data is loaded into it. The "gateways" functionality is not yet there, so it would have to be implemented. But issues like the one that started this discussion are easier to resolve in hamnetdb because every object has a list of maintainers, which the owner or a sufficiently privileged person can modify. So you can easily hand over control over your subnet (e.g. to include it in a gateway) to someone else without sysop involvement.
Rob
Please take a look at dn42 implementation of such services: https://dn42.net/services/Whois