Hello Ed,
This sounds like a fine idea.
Hence, I'm trying to create a 'comprehensive
energy picture' that is as
free as agendas as possible. The idea is to get the 'big ideas and numbers'
and put them in a format that makes it easy for the average educated
reader to understand.
This could be said of the a great many Wikipedia articles and subprojects.
As for the "two parts" of your proposed project:
The project would consist of two parts:
1) an open, public wiki that is in the form of hierarchical discussion pages
which sort out basic facts and principles.
I think the first part would make an excellent wikiproject
(see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject ),
which you could promote on IRC, via the mailing lists as you are doing, or on
the individual user pages of contributors who are working on related subjects.
2) paper publication(s) based on the first wiki,
also in wiki form (I'm in the
process of writing a wiki based on the media wiki schema which provides
services like pagination, typesetting and index support).
The second part seems like it should be its own separate affair, as your other
comments suggest this would veer towards original research/analysis, and as it
requires new software innovations for its realization..
+sj+