<p>I am very interested to see how we can use this site for a greater purpose beyond individual Q&amp;A.  </p>

<p>Regarding your proposal: I would be more interested in seeing a "polystats project" which tackles big open questions in statistics, rather than specific statistical projects.  Although I think the site could be used for both.</p>

<p>There should be a higher-level aspect to this to make it cohesive (such as a group blog which would catalog the progress as a single thread).</p>

<p>See <a href="https://cstheory.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/188/how-can-we-collaboratively-investigate-open-problems">this related discussion the CS Theory stackexchange site</a>.  I had started a thread on that site <a href="https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/174/major-unsolved-problems-in-theoretical-computer-science">to identify a list of important questions</a>, and similar thread <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2379/what-are-the-big-problems-in-statistics">was started on here recently</a>.</p>

<p>We can also use the idea of a <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/341/how-to-promote-the-site/370#370">data analysis competition</a> in conjunction with this.</p>

<p><em>Edit:</em></p>

<p>After re-reading your question, I think that the question as you phrased it <strong>is a great idea</strong>, and keeping it grounded in a real problem is the right approach.  We can build something like this in stages (as you are doing here) and open a meta thread that would ask "what should our first project be" where people can list proposals.  This kind of incremental solution to a data analysis project could be managed completely on SE without relying on any other third party software.  I propose that we tag these questions with [polystats-project].</p>

<p>All being said, there is of course nothing to stop someone from doing this currently without any meta-discussion.</p>
