There are quite a few of those threads where people want to learn in a group and start simple projects.
Probably some (most? all?) of them belong in the classifieds.
I wonder if it would make sense to have a regular, self organizing study group feature, maybe as a simple forum.
For example:
- New projects start at the 1st of each month
- If 3 or more people agree to work together they can start a team (there are many people with different interests, but if enough people are interested there should be enough overlap)
- Teams can start 1 month, 3 month or 1 year projects (not sure if 1 month makes a lot of sense, though)
Learning in a group just makes sense. There could be rules as guidance ...
... the efforts would be documented and experienced people could write helpful advice and point the group members in the right direction.
It would not even have to be for absolute beginners only. It could be combined with a gamedev workshop effort.
People could write what they would like to see developed (libraries, tools or games), the teams could work on one of those things.
The code could be hosted on Github.
Maybe game design study groups could come up with game concepts and programming groups could try to realize the best one.
Finding tutors and getting feedback is underrated and could maybe be encouraged that way.