Wikipedia defines “Trust, but verify” — the phrase Ronald Reagan famously used in negotiating nuclear-arms cuts with the Soviet Union — this way:
“A form of advice given which recommends that while a source of information might be considered reliable, one should perform additional research to verify that such information is accurate or trustworthy.”
Based on Wikipedia’s comical ignorance of a subject I know well — New York City real estate — I’d take it a step further for the entire “people’s encyclopedia” site: Believe nothing it says about anything.
It’s no secret Wikipedia’s often bonkers. Teachers warn students, and editors warn reporters. Even so, the myth endures that it’s a viable research tool that “usually” gets it right, even if a touch of skepticism occasionally comes in handy.
But I tested that premise on some familiar Big Apple landmarks. Chelsea Market, the food hall that occupies the ground floor of a giant office building at 75 Ninth Ave., is called a “22-building complex” — misleading at best and absurd by any normal English-language reading. The former Nabisco factory was cobbled together from a bunch of smaller buildings generations ago — but it’s a technicality unlikely to help tourists searching for the food hall’s nonexistent 21 other locations.
Wikipedia knows that Tavern on the Green closed in 2009, but not much else: It says the Crystal Room “features windows overlooking” gardens, blithely unaware that the Crystal Room was demolished three years ago.
Did you know that Time Warner Center, a twin-towered building, is “a pair of interconnected” skyscrapers? Or that its Jazz at Lincoln Center facility’s three distinct performance halls seating nearly 2,000, plus a huge event space, are a single “1,200-seat theater?”
A few weeks ago, Peter Malkin and his son Anthony, who ran the complicated partnership which controlled the Empire State Building, successfully completed a two-year struggle to take the enterprise public.
It was widely and exhaustively reported. Even before its recent climax, Anthony’s growing public profile — including over his controversial refusal to light the top for Mother Teresa — had made his name near-synonymous with the landmark.
How many times does the Malkin name appear in Wikipedia’s lengthy Empire State Building entry? None. Zero. It identifies the owner as “2,800 investors in Empire State Building Associates” — like leaving the Steinbrenners out of the Yankees.
Or, how many floors of the New York Times headquarters tower on Eighth Avenue are owned by the Times Co.? “Floors 2-27,” Wikipedia says. In fact, the Times sold all but seven of those floors to H.P. Carey & Co. four years ago.
Why is Wikipedia so useless?
In a recent MIT Technology Review article, “The Decline of Wikipedia,” Tom Simonite documents how the site’s increasingly “labyrinthine,” bureaucratic editing protocols drive away would-be new contributors, leaving the task to an overworked, insular hierarchy less interested in accuracy than in upholding some vague Wikipedian ideal.
It’s chilling because so many people — young journalists especially — look to Wikipedia first. They not only shun print reference sources, they even balk at scouring the Web for information if it entails, God forbid, clicking on more than a single link.
About show business, Wikipedia is chronically wrong, routinely awarding Oscars and Emmys to performers who were merely nominated for them.
It’s unbalanced to the point of defamation about corporate America. The entry for admittedly controversial Monsanto is no balanced history of a Fortune 500 company with 22,000 employees, but an indictment — even including a long section on Monsanto’s supposed role in driving farmers in India to commit suicide.
A matter of interpretation? No, it’s propaganda. And there are no shades of gray when it comes to easily verifiable facts about our home town’s bricks and mortar.
Donald Trump’s entry doesn’t even mention Trump Tower, his flagship property familiar to any viewer of “The Apprentice,” except to say that he “renovated the Trump Tower in New York City.”
It doesn’t say when the alleged renovation took place, what Trump Tower is, where it is, or even that Trump built it. He never “renovated” the mostly condo building, he merely at one point redesigned its shopping atrium.
We’re told that 70 Pine St., the former AIG headquarters downtown, was “sold to developer Youngwoo and Associates in 2009.” But not that Youngwoo later sold the skyscraper to a company called MetroLoft, which subsequently sold it to current owner Rose Associates.
Rose long ago scratched previous owners’ plans for office space and condominiums cited by Wikipedia. The tower is being turned entirely into rental apartments.
Yet, references to nonexistent offices at 70 Pine St. continue to pop up in the press. Where could they have gotten that idea?
It’s easy to laugh off the Big Apple howlers. But millions take Wikipedia as gospel on more challenging subjects, from Kenya’s Mau Mau war to nuclear fission, which can’t be checked with a stroll around the block. What a travesty for journalism, for education and for what we once called “knowledge.”