Is there a place where people can document and share the things they are tinkering with in the shed?

I had this idea where people's inventions/devices could be sent around in a "pay-it-forward circle" for learning and inspiration. People already do that with crystals.

Also, can being aware that x number of people are working on the same thing yield to development in the state-of-the-art if they start working together?

I suppose there's always that tension between DIY'ers bouncing ideas off each other vs prototypes built in fitted-out research labs to think about.

Is this idea anything more that just the addition of another sub-reddit or using existing teamwork software?

If you had something to share, how would you choose it amongst the 10's or 100's of things you have already built? Maybe you'd need commercialization help? Are there liabilities and risks in sharing DIY devices?

I've been thinking about https://openhardware.directory/ and https://ohwr.org/ - maybe if you list your projects, agents can do the work of bringing people together and finding new ways to develop them. It's about value-adding on top of decentralized and disjointed projects. An easy way to construct plans or follow them? How to minimize duplicated work across the world?

Maybe a "Universal Commerce Protocol" (http://ucp.dev) but for scientists?