This will be just as useful a resource as Wikipedia.

And make about as much sense in the real world ...

The only good book ever written by committee is Naked Came The Stranger, which is a pretty great parody.
Not true. The 9/11 report was written by a committee, and that's great. The King James Bible, while being more like translation by committee, is considered some of the best writing in English.

OK, I realize I'm just a bitter English major but I'm pretty sick of the idea that anyone who can type can write something that's worthwhile to read. Just because you can string words together to form a sentence doesn't mean it has value. This is equivalent to the idea that if you sit twelve monkeys in front of twelve typewriters you'll eventually get the complete works of Shakespeare. No, no you won't. You'll get crap. And what's sad to me is that increasingly we as a society are willing to accept crap in place of well thought out writing.

PopTart, I agree with you completely.

And Gabriel, I don't think that the 9/11 Report is a great book. As far as reports go, it's pretty good, but I don't think of it as a book written by committee--it's more like a government report that's so big that you can read it like a book. And as to the King James Bible, that's more like an anthology that was edited by one person (King James, or whoever actually edited the thing), and not a committee.

And as to the King James Bible, that's more like an anthology that was edited by one person (King James, or whoever actually edited the thing), and not a committee.
Not really. It was written by 47 people in six committees.

@2 - the Bible was written by committee, actually.

No, the bible itself is a collection of books written by many distinct, separate authors over a very long period of time and arranged in varying collections by different groups. Compare with the KJV, which was a specific seven-year project by an actual committee.

This is just sad.

It's an infinite number of monkeys, not twelve. And you're certain to get Shakespeare's works, as well as everything else that was ever written. You'll get crap to, but you have forever to read it, right? (Twelve Monkeys was a movie with Bruce Willis, though it only had maybe three monkeys, at best.)

Nobody said this "LiveBook" thing was supposed to be literature, great or otherwise. The point is obviously to be found in the making of the book, not the reading of it. So why anyone would interpret it otherwise and get all bitter over it is beyond me.

No, the final version was done by a committee overseen by an Emperor.

And they had really bad editing too - heck, two creation myths?

Will @9, what do you mean by the 'final version' of the Bible? Do you realize there are many different versions of the bible, some containing books not contained by others? There is no final version.

I thought someone would have pointed the obvious by now: The Bible is written by God. You historians.

Naked Came the Manatee is also a great work of fiction by committee.