Hurrah, someone replied.
The answer is essentially "yes" to both questions. The odds are that, at first, we will wind up with a series of seemingly unconnected vignettes. With sufficient editing and connecting scenes, this will produce some sort of patchwork novel. With more editing and writing, this will smooth it out somewhat. With more editing and writing, there might be more depth to the project. The whole thing essentially winds up in a state of perpetual draft, where it can always be improved and changed.
Genre isn't ostensibly a problem, because even if a chapter's seemingly set in a Tolkeinesque fantasy world, and another's set in a gritty cyberpunk dystopia (to give two random opposed examples), it's possibly to connect it all via parallel universes, etc., if need be.
I would be hesitant about throwing caution to the wind like this, but of course, Wikia retains the old version of each page, some changing things doesn't permanently get rid of them, there's always a backup.
I've also got half a mind to extend things a little thusly: if, by the end of, say, each calendar year, there's a coherent novel, then it could maybe be released as a free ebook, to provide snapshots of the project and show how it changes.