Because this has REAL BAD potential, let me start by saying what I do not want:

• I'm not looking for a section where anymonk has an excuse to simply cut 'n paste umpteen million lines of code and say debug the error!! expecting monk magic to keep their job/contract for them.
• I'm not looking to get free work out of other monks (at least no more than any other part of the site does) by making them do full peer review of a (falsely) lazy programmer's code.
• I'm not looking to begin any sort of business here at the monastery

after typing the title, these were the first things that came to my mind as I thought about what I would think if I saw that title on the Newest Nodes list. Hopefully that will make me a bit more flame retardant : )

What I *am* thinking of is a place for anymonk to get a sanity check from the monastery. I know I am often expected to wear all the hats on some projects, either because there just is no one else to wear them or because they are side jobs I take on real quick for small chunks of cash. It is very easy on these projects, at least for me :), to go down bad paths not because of bad code, but bad ideas and direction. It's always easier to work when you have a sounding board. So perhaps there could be a place for monks to put up details about these projects just to see what other monks would say.

I'm thinking it would be it's own section so that it would appear as another heading on newest nodes that people could ignore if they didn't feel like paying attention. Also so it could be VERY HEAVILY MODERATED :) I'm thinking:

• it should only be open for posting by X level monks
• new projects can only be posted by moderation, i.e. you can post the first note on the project, but it will not appear in the section unless moderated there - in fact, I'd even say there should be a way to simply let other delete the inane by vote. Maybe only let it be moderated in if three monks say yes and have it completely deleted if three monks say no.
• maybe access to reply to a project would be restricted to higher levels too - everyone could read and learn, though.

The questions that still float in my head are:

• would the code for the scripts in the projects be on the nodes about the project, or somewhere else so discussion about goals isn't be trailed by these huge chunks of code...
• is the current node nested look and feel flexible enough for this sort of self referential discussion? (if not, and people like this idea, what to do?)
• would this be going down a bad path of making the monastery do double duty and a VCS?

as stated at the start of this, I see that there could be really bad potential for this, but I can think enough times where if I'd simply been forced to type out what I was thinking for someone else to see, or had someone else read through my specifications or goals, I could have been saved a lot of time and effort because that second pair of eyes (or even the potential of them) would have been enough to catch the insanity I was about to embark on. The former happens to me all the time here already. I have something I'm working on, hit a wall, work on it, fail to solve it, come here to post and as I formulate the post see the problem. I'm thinking it would happen with the other more abstract aspects of the projects as well if there were someplace for me to post those where they would not be noise.

This may be total insanity itself. let me know : )

"sometimes when you make a request for the head you don't
want the big, fat body...don't you go snickering."
                                         -- Nathan Torkington UoP2K a.k.a gnat