There'd be a few things to think about: should the project already exist? If it exists, does the preexisting admin need to be involved with this crowd-source site? If it doesn't exist, should the submitter be the admin of the new project? Should submitters get their reputation from activity already performed on other sites?
Maybe a pledge system, where the submitter and pledgers agree to begin once a certain number of people pledge, and those pledges should be recorded to see if they're followed through. The site should aim to take a project from idea to completion. The submitter could set a number of roles that developers can choose to fulfill.
Even some crowd-sourced funding could work. Funding could be introduced or opened at some point, say from the beginning, but with activity picking up as a project progresses. Imagine Diaspora using the site.
I am picturing an almost Reddit like interface on the front end with lists of open source projects looking for help, os projects that are needed, and os projects that are being abandoned and need people to take over.
Yep. GitHub has an API so that could be useful. I'm sure people will want to discuss projects and ask questions, especially with the admin or creator.
Also, I was thinking that a widget would be good, so existing sites could let its users know it's looking for development help. These sites would build up a record of people that have contributed code.
It is certainly something I could use as well. It's so hard to figure out what to write OS-wise (That's the number one question during interviews: Have you ever contributed to open source, and I always say I don't know what to do or haven't found one to work with).
I have to figure out a name, but for now I will start doing some development, and mockups and see what I can come up with.
bbommarito - I had the idea that you might want to work on one of my sites for a convertible note or straight equity. Ping me if interested (or anyone else) - at least you'd be standing on something already there. It hasn't launched but once it does, it really needs another piece to give it something that could gain decent traction. It uses Django.
I can also help with this idea too if you like (inc. mockups) - an idea which really comes about from this situation I find myself. For a domain, you could use hackerbrain .com which I can give.
Now, when you say "discuss projects and ask questions" are you thinking wiki interface for discussions, maybe a sort of GetSatisfaction type idea for discussions, maybe with voting?
Even Github lacks some neat discussion systems that might be nice to see somewhere.
Provide a realtime chat if you can, ie like:
https://github.com/isaacsu/twich
Give it a timetable so each project has a set time for participants to chat, (the project in question is displayed at the top of a page.) You can also record chats, and offer multiple rooms.
So, what would you ultimately like to see? A reddit type interface to talk about open source projects, with perhaps ties into Git/Github etc?