I will defer other comments on this thread until next week when I am back in the office, but for the moment, let me piggyback on this thought. Process improvement is definitely needed. The pre-proposal category is very useful completely apart from GRIP I suggest decoupling GRIP functionality from Pre-proposal category. GRIP involvement for authors/proposers who wish GRIP’s assistance can be accomplished outside view of the public (e.g., shaping a google docs draft by collaborative effort between author and GRIP members - so long as the process to go down the road is published so anyone can use this route) or in the view of the public (a new GRIP subcategory under Forum governance). In the case of the latter, the public could view the shaping of the draft but only GRIP would comment/shape/interact - and that specifically and only for the purpose of getting the draft in presentable form, not to gatekeep or give their personal views as community members as to the merits of the proposal.
The pre-proposal category becomes what is has mainly been used for these last two months - a place to gauge the larger community sentiment on concept (eg PIPs), proposed value/value range (e.g., PUPs) or size of reimbursement being requested (e.g., PEPs). This kind of interaction is a wider community function, not a GRIP function. The utility of having the pre-proposal category for this purpose rather than just jumping directly to a PIP/PEP/PUP is that it allows a more collaborative relation between the author and community in finding right parameter value, funding size, etc than may occur with directly dropping a PIP/PUP/PEP. In addition, community sentiment can be gauged for a proposed change or proposed reimbursement by presenting a case for the topic with less formality and rigor than a proposal requires and only investing the time and effort to turn the topic into a formal proposal if it is gauged that there is sufficient community support to at least have a fighting chance to pass the proposal. My IDEAS on conducting 24hr or 48hr straw polls could be useful in this context.
Preproposals are standard practice in all efficient governance. Imagine Congress having to draft and redraft a 2000 page spending bill before even knowing if there is support for the total budget of the bill. Rather, a short preposal for X total budget with “details TBD” is debated, support gauged, and only then is the effort put in to draft the 2000 page document for formal discussion, debate and reshaping of the details.
In terms of relationship with GRIP, GRIPs assistance, if requested, can come at any time, but one logical flow would be as follows: author creates a pre-proposal on a topic to gauge community interest. If feedback shows that interest is sufficient, the author then might request GRIP assistance in converting the topic into a formal proposal.