Jay R. Ashworth wrote: [...]
Explaining to you why that is is such a large task that I almost despair of attempting it. But, short version: that's like saying "I'd like to put a 900 horse Indy engine in my mini-pickup, because I think I could haul a bigger trailer that way".
Nonsense. As far as the raw amount of data goes, even the English Wikipedia can be handled by entry-level server hardware. What kills Wikipedia is the volume of requests, and there's no reason to believe that the OP will get even a fraction of Wikipedia's; there's nothing inherently wrong with his idea.
Mark Jaroski wrote:
That's almost a better comparison with the nearly half a million article WP database.
The English Wikipedia alone has close to 1.1 million articles.