Minilogin was a LAN thing, really, and those with dialup. It helped those people who wanted to run a private server without having to be on the internet. I, being on dialup, used Minilogin when starting a server with a friend or two. However, it's not important enough to warrant all this fuss. It was a nice thing to have, but not needed.
A locked server can easily be private, if you only give status to people you want logging in. With high enough status, people can log into locked servers (unless I am mistaken, feel free to correct me Devs.

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