I think the old skin request died due to poor balance of supply and demand. There's a lot of demand while barely any supply. Also, many people expect to put in a request and demand nothing less than professional quality products. RTW is not losing popularity thanks to the excellent mods so it's not due to lack of people interested in it. In fact, there's probably more people interested in the mods than the original game by now.

My suggestion is this: you should tie this site with the academy somehow. Make it so that people can request skins/models/mods (in small scale, no "GIMME A CAVEMEN TOTAL COVERSION WITH MAMMOTHS", etc) and newbie modders can try their hands on it. It would make a good learning place instead of starting a mod team, or trying to join a mod team just to learn. Senior modders can just give tips if they're busy working on mods. Heck, maybe you can have a few senior modders be "graders" or official critics/mentors.