Development uncouraged by decentralization, fragmentation!

[e-motiv]

Forgive my frustration, I am normally not helpless, but...
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I am a developer with not so much time, though I think I have a lot to offer and I want to offer now and then with "some" time and code, BUT..

It's almost impossible in this "development sphere" for a developer to know where to do what and it is also fragmentated in so many sites or at least it costs too much time to attain results!
I am not talking about the process (which in itself takes time and about which there is nothing to do).

I mean, for example:
This is what I gathered from reading around on joomla and from what (joomla) people suggested to me so far, just for me to propose an idea about an image-handling library (an to abstract it from media manager) and to possibly help by submitting my own code:

• This topic (which I guess is dead or integrated "somewhere" in the code, but where and where to discuss the abstraction?).
• joomlacode
• trackers
• google development groups (which is fragmented on its own: cms, general, ..)
• new topic on development forum
• ... probably more?

And not only is it fragmented this way, also within these above sites themselves, it is fragmented. I mean, depending on where the development stand at with an issue (such as "nowhere", "proposed only", "white paper", voting, started coding at home, started coding on svn (1.5 or 1.6?), implemented but not tested, and so on, ..) you need to look on a different sub-"sites" or similiar sub-"things" (such as subforum, tracker project, google discussion, and so on) and you cannot always search on different sub-sites, let alone search on all these sites with one search.

I've so far spent 2-3 hours (!) reading/searching/informing myself and am still not sure where I should join this "issue" and who is currently building the php, or in what version i should offer modifications (IF I should already offer them), etc...
Maybe several people are doing it at the same time?
I have found several, but now I am afraid to post further to bloat this fragmentation even more or to get kicked by some moderator or just to be futile at the wrong place.

Suggestion:

• Centralize things, use one (web)planning tool, and one only where one (including also sporadic developers) can see fairly fast, what is proposed, what is done, where is the code, who is on it, for which version is it meant, etc...
• Or at least already put somewhere what the "path" is someone should follow to get something proposed/done/whatever..Though there is a problem with this, namely that before doing something one should first search and see if something is already being done, right? But where do you search? All of the above sites/tools and sub-"things"?
• One can even leave all these sites exist, but at least agree on a centralized place where one can follow the whole life-cycle of one thing (with update comments, links to relevant issues on other sites, and so on). Though I fail to believe that someone would want to be responsible for that.
• Put whatever centralization is chosen at a new main menu on the developer joomla site and explain which is for what, where to do this or that (proposals, Feature requests, bugs, etc. and make a distinction between if you want to code for it or ask for it to the developers, and so on and on and on

I am sure (at least for myself) that this does not promote people to team up or even start to develop. But I am still hanging on (though almost at the end of my energy).

P.S. This is just my first "projections" on it. Maybe someone can come up with better ideas for this problem.
P.P.S. Don't hesitate to say that I am wrong, but at least do it from the point of view of a non-high-load joomla developer (bc. there lies the main issue, I presume)..
Respect for those guys, by the way!