"Somewhere between the two" is the very definition of mediocrity.
Yeah, I guess it is. What's wrong with being mediocre? Obviously we aim to be the best we can, but we have to be realistic and admit we're not perfect.
I'm not talking about ideologies, I'm talking about whether or not the proposed project will actually work. It's a brilliant idea from an ideological standpoint and I agree with the values it represents, but if it isn't actually going to work...
And you're absolutely certain of that?
Of course not, one cannot be absolutely certain of anything. If I had to put a number on it, I'd say I'm 99% that this proposed project will never rival Wikipedia.
For an encyclopaedia to be successful, you need people to actually read it.
And how do you get them to do that?
By being useful. Marketing also helps, but if you're useful you'll get word of mouth, which is how people find out about Wikipedia. The way I see it, what's useful about Wikipedia is that it has enormous amounts of information for free (as in beer - I doubt many people care that it's free as in speech) and that information is of a decent quality. While it's not reliable enough for serious academic work, it's reliable enough for most people, and while the writing style could do with being more aesthetically pleasing it's generally not unpleasant to read.