The Wittiness of Crowds

Check out David Weinberger's post on Philipp Blom's Enlightening the World, a recent book about the 18th century Encyclopedie.  Weinberger laments that Wikipedia's commitment to a neutral voice of view gets in the way of style, one of several things that distinguished the French project.  He concludes, "I guess that's the price we pay for Wikipedia's approximation of neutrality."  We agree -- and we agree it's a price worth paying for Wikipedia --  but something else may be at work here.  Is is really possible to write anything witty by committee?  The thing about style:  the individual voice.