As a matter of fact, scholars of Old Icelandic are doing just this, with advanced students who participate in the summer manuscript course being assigned a text to work on which will eventually be published. Meg Cormack
There is absolutely no reason why a critical edition, or a translation, could not be produced entirely online, by a collaborative effort of a small group, working in different parts of the world. I would welcome ideas on this, from anyone working on editions, or translations. There has to be a better way than would we have now, and perhaps this could be achieved by appropriate use of technology