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+