Everything that needed to be said has been said other than the IC template
I'm in favor of an IC checklist, but I'm against the idea of a template. I love the creativity of IC posts from GMK Stealth, Maestro, Civilization, etc, and enforcing a template would stifle that creativity
I do think a checklist for the post is a good start. You separate ICs into however many categories there are - keycap sets, artisans, keyboard cases, macro pads, etc
For each, there's a set of simple checklists.
For keycap sets, for example, you must have had at least done color matching and kitting (I'm not a keycap set maker so someone else can likely come up with better answers). Things like pricing and vendors and artisans isn't a requirement in the initial post.
For macro boards, having manufactured a prototype and being able to share pictures of that would gain trust better than just renders.
The point of all of this is not to gatekeep, but to keep quality of posts as high as possible. Old members may not have the highest quality of IC posts, neither does it mean new members will have bad IC posts.