1)Are any of you capable and would any of you be willing to admin...

Yes.

2)Would you draft up some "bureaucracy" that defines your group...

That part is not difficult

Isolate what you like and don't like about SaidIt, Voat, Ruqqus, Reddit, etc.

Old Reddit with the RES features IMO is the ideal format. If you have that as a starting point the rest of it is just microadjustments.

3)Would your sub-communities be willing to collaborate with other communities (like what exists on SaidIt) to develop shared or separate decentralized federated forums, develop common and distinct bureaucracies that are not necessarily all the same (more on this later), and other things to foster fair, open, accountable, consistent, honest homes for free-thought?

I don't really know. As long as all the control rests with mods in individual subs than collaboration with other communities is just fine.

With FLOSS decentralized platforms other servers can pick and choose which forums they also wish to co-host.

I'm not really sure how this looks in real life so can't say whether or not I think this is a good idea. You need to hide that complexity from the normal user. All the decision making should be mod level. Admin should only have a narrow number of things they control. User power should only be the power of the 'subscribe' and of course the power of making and modding a new community if they see a niche that needs filled. That's why reddit became so powerful. They let people create their own communities and promote their own communities and they didn't fuck with them (at least not for the first 10 years or so).

4)Would your sub-communities be willing to collaborate with other communities to share expenses?

Of course.

I think we should just have a donation button to raise funds. Maybe badge type award for good comments that donates to the site would also be useful.

all documented with 100% transparency on a wiki with an open history for verification?

Makes sense but funding is a lot more complicated than that. Maybe someone with experience in these field can come in and give us guidance.

5)What questions or ideas do you think I've forgotten to bring up?

You and all the initial admins and subverse mods are going to have to be incredibly patient. You can't just instantly create a social media site. They have to have a lot of people willing to build things and just wait for users to arrive. Anybody getting involved also needs to have a hands off approach to new subverses. Let people come in and do their own thing. That's how you build social media. Make a structure, make it stable and let other people play with the structure.

I also think you need to figure out your approach to porn, cartoon porn, JB porn, and edgy porn discussion. In the political realm you're going to get groups WAY more politically edgy then we are (from both the left and right). You're going to get shit tons of bad faith mods that create sites just to make the project look terrible. If you only allow what's legal in the US you're going to have a shit load of disgusting and degenerate content. Get ready because you're also going to get criticized for being against free speech if you don't allow 'age play' subs and gross shit like that. You can't have a truly open site and avoid those types of trolls that will make subs just to get the project put on a watchlist. Maybe you could create some very very clear labels and give people well built options that let them filter certain categories of subs. Maybe that's what you are talking about with the 'FLOSS'? Are you going to have little mini federation within the project?