Exactly the right avenue. Unfortunately, Anki typically uses its own idiosyncratic data format that's not very handy for this kind of thing, but it's possible to export and import decks to text, as it turns out.

Anki itself stores it"s data in SQLlite databases.

I think there a good chance that Anki itself will get better over time at collaborative deck editing. I think it's one of the reason why Damien made the integrating with the web interface on of the priorities in Anki 2