I'm interested.
Can't speak for others, but you can't know until you give it a go.

Go for-it. (Or even share link to a "centralized platform") we need more content here

Short stories are very popular

Yes, but there are quite a few communities that cover this already, e.g. !shortstories@literature.cafe.

Ao3 (Archive of Our Own) exists for people who want to read stories. People come to Lemmy (and sites like it) to interact.

One suggestion would be to make interactive stories. Have someone post a chapter with a poll or ask what a character or characters should do next. Whichever numbers or arguments win the author over determine, or help determine where the story goes. Communities like AskOuija (not sure if I spelt that correctly) do a similar thing on a much smaller scale.

Writing is kind of a big, busy task. If someone were only expected to write a chapter or a short chapter at a time and let people vote on the stories they care about, someone whose story got no traction would have no obligation to continue. Or they could try again with another story. You could even offer writing prompts (or just cross-post them from a community dedicated to them).

+1 from me.

Yes I'm interested in reading short stories.

It's not necessarily what I come here for, but I think it could be interesting, at least if you can tag things. Not necessarily for content, but for series being able to find the other posts would be nice. Maybe for series you start it off with an editable master post that you link to and edit every time?

Then she said "I don't know."