US Senate Candy Desk
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Really, this article has no place in any physical encyclopedia. It's essentially an anecdote. A footnote, at best.
But it's human interest, and it's fascinating, if inconsequential. And because of the collaborative power of Wikipedia, we can have a multi-paragraph informative article like this, maintained by regular people, down to the current contents of the candy desk, with links to the articles for the specific candies...
Of course, we all already know this about Wikipedia, we've known it since the start. But sometimes I forget this feeling, and then I'm especially struck by it when I read an articles like this.
(This is a great article and does illustrate something Wikipedia does better than conventional encyclopedias. At this point, I think the comparison to Britannica has become unhelpful; WP is sui generis, and one of the great (maybe the great) intellectual accomplishments of the Internet.
The biggest limit is author/editor time. The Internet certainly provides a bigger pool of editors (and a lower implied quality floor) than a centralized company hiring authors/editors with a few people in charge of the organizing, the way print encyclopedias did.
But even with a completely decentralized worldwide editor corps, there is still some amount of organizational overhead which continues growing as the project grows, and there is still a finite amount of author/editor attention.
Wikipedia can’t in practice have an article about literally anything.
> Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, but a digital encyclopedia project. Other than verifiability and the other points presented on this page, there is no practical limit to the number of topics Wikipedia can cover or the total amount of content. However, there is an important distinction between what can be done, and what should be done, which is covered under § Encyclopedic content below. Consequently, this policy is not a free pass for inclusion: articles must abide by the appropriate content policies, particularly those covered in the five pillars.
It basically says if the content is encyclopedic by nature, meets guide of general notability, well-written to meet the quality standard, it has its full rights to be included, and niche topics are usually deleted. However, if it has been mentioned multiple times in books or by the media, even as anecdotes, it can be included, so it depends...
So good luck on bumping into information on the US Senate Candy Desk if you're only searching the French Wikipedia. Likewise, good luck bumping into an anecdotal article about France if you're only searching the English Wikipedia.
And I add two additional points here.
1. English is the gateway language. Once an article has an English version, it is more likely to be translated into other languages.
2. Since this article is now being listed on the homepage of Hacker News, it's more likely to attract attention of a Wikipedia contributor who speaks another language, and eventually leads to a new translation.
Really interesting by itself.
Lol be careful or you'll invoke a non-notability deletion.
In 1965, California's George Murphy joined the Senate, and kept candy in his desk to offer his colleagues, and for himself, though eating is not allowed on the Senate floor. When he left the Senate after a six-year term, other Republican senators maintained the custom. ...
Murphy replaced Pierre Salinger, who himself was was appointed to serve the remainder of a deceased senator's term:
In 1964, he [Murphy] was elected as a Republican to the Senate, having defeated Pierre Salinger, the former presidential press secretary in the Kennedy White House, who had been appointed several months earlier to serve the remainder of the late Clair Engle's unexpired term.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Murphy
The deceased senator, Clair Engle, is best known for having participated, although paralyzed and unable to speak because of a brain tumor, in the vote to break the filibuster against the Civil Rights Act:
On June 10, 1964, during the roll call for the historic, successful effort to break the filibuster on what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when the clerk reached "Mr. Engle", there was no reply. The tumor had robbed Engle of his ability to speak. Slowly lifting an arm, he pointed to his eye, thereby signaling his affirmative vote ("aye").[6] The cloture vote was 71–29, four votes more than the two thirds required to end the filibuster.[7] Nine days later, the Senate approved the Act itself.
The two parties can't even agree on a shared love of sweets, and have to have separate candy desks?
Either way, it’s candy, who cares? We’re talking about a workplace candy drawer.
It's just on that side of the room, nothing further to dig up.
Where are the sides for the Greens, or the Monster Raving Looney Party?
It's emblematic, that's for sure.
I think the Republicans just made it a tradition first, so companies want to be a part of that. I don't think it means anything, it's just how it happened.
> the Democratic desk is stocked by a fund paid into by Senators who want candy.
Also-- can you imagine being all excited about your first day at the NSA and they tell you your job is securing the candy desk?
Sorry, I set you up for that one. :)
(Should have left a little hash of this comment in the original comment.)
After all, even small gifts from reps have been shown to influence doctors:
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/health/research/19beha.ht...