Well source language word paired with one or more translations is the minimal structure for a dictionary and some printed dictionaries are indeed like this.

I browsed some entries of your dictionary and indeed their are (sometimes quite elaborate) explanations. I could easily why it ran out of steam, especially even a basic compiling is a daunting task. Also contributors are fews. On the Jibiki.fr (Japanese-French) project, most of the corrections are made by two members. They're starting from an existing dictionary and it still took years to just check the headwords.

Thanks very much for the paper. I'll read it. I actually already had one of your paper on my machine (Asialex 2011 proceedings) but haven't read it yet.