Because Cyc is not seen as having been successful, so comparing a new project to it implies that Abstract Wikipedia won't be successful either. And, of course, all new approaches in each discipline fail, until sometimes they start succeeding.

I didn't read it that way. I thought it was an interesting comparison.

Because Cyc crashed in a truly spectacular fashion.

How did it crash? And what was spectacular about it?

Cyc got hyped for while in the early 90s. It became apparent, however, that rule-based wasn't going to play as big a role as ML in the future of AI research. It still exists, but the company is really secretive, and hasn't released anything viable in years.

[edit: I wasn't alive back then, so most of what I know comes from the Wikipedia article and a recent HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21781597 . My view of Cyc probably comes across as slightly negative. Their (Cycorp) view seems to have evolved since then, and they seem to be creating some really interesting stuff.]

Always worthwhile to revisit assumptions. I don't know much about Cyc, I was just curious.