I'm not sure "clan" is the right word. I don't know if any of you visit DeviantArt.com, but they have a project called Mosaics. Basically, someone posts a template, and then people work on a section of the template, and the result is a mosaic of a bunch of people's work.
http://www.deviantart.com/?tier=mosaics
I'm thinking something along those lines, where a bunch of people work on a "template" (that is, a hack idea) to produce a hack. It wouldn't be able to be as free-form as the mosaic idea, otherwise it would never get done and wouldn't work worth ++++, but you get the idea.