Re: suggestion- please comment
its a very noble idea and IMO the next logical step for a mature, motivated community.
at the same time its extremely difficult to keep together, and even if there is a nexus of people working on something, its really difficult to get something achievable done. people, including myself, tend to feel and express lofty aims and get their feel-good fix from just imagining it coming together. when there is no face-to-face consequence of your words its really tough to get people to stick to what they say.
I used to be a part of a similar endeavor called virtual think tank pakistan, (www.vttp.org) and the lead guy there was extremely motivated about using the web to introduce policy change. They had some friends in high places and journalists on board so they managed to get some involvement from the govt of Pakistan too.
But when your not getting visible results out of it, it basically becomes another place to share you political opinions, basically another mailing list. the guy in the end became quite disillusioned about the potential of getting results from random people on the web, and gradually the activities died down.
What I would suggest though is instead of starting from scratch and discovering the same pitfalls and limitations of virtual groups people could network with other groups that share the same vision and identify useful areas of work or perhaps collaborate with them on projects.
for example i know vttp had a policy paper virtual seminar/competition a couple of years ago and we submitted the best papers to the govt of pakistan or something like that. depending on what you want you could either pick up on that (if hes not motivated in continuing that endeavour) or if hes still doing it we could motivate people to send policy recommendations to that avenue.
edit: i just read your second post up there and noticed your on somewhat the same track as what i suggested. sorry!