The Conservative Cave
Current Events => General Discussion => Topic started by: tuolumnejim on November 30, 2008, 01:26:16 PM
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Something I've know since I read the first or second link.
Link (http://www.fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/media/internet/news.php?q=1227232155)
Snopes.com is a Scam
For the past few years www.snopes.com has positioned itself, or others have labeled it, as the 'tell all final word' on any comment, claim and email. But for several years people tried to find out who exactly was behind snopes.com. Only recently did Wikipedia get to the bottom of it - kinda makes you wonder what they were hiding. Well, finally we know. It is run by a husband and wife team - that's right, no big office of investigators and researchers, no team of lawyers. It's just a mom-and-pop operation that began as a hobby.
David and Barbara Mikkelson in the San Fernando Valley of California started the Website about 13 years ago - and they have no formal background or experience in investigative research. After a few years it gained popularity believing it to be unbiased and neutral, but over the past couple of years people started asking questions who was behind it and did they have a selfish motivation? The reason for the questions - or skepticims - is a result of snopes.com claiming to have
the bottom line facts to certain questions or issue when in fact they have been proven wrong. Also, there were criticisms the Mikkelsons were not really investigating and getting to the 'true' bottom of various issues. I can personally vouch for that complaint.
A few months ago, when my State Farm agent Bud Gregg in Mandeville hoisted a political sign referencing Barack Obama and made a big splash across the internet, 'supposedly' the Mikkelson's claim to have researched this issue before posting their findings on snopes.com. In their statement they claimed the corporate office of State Farm pressured Gregg into taking down the sign, when in fact nothing of the sort 'ever' took place.
I personally contacted David Mikkelson (and he replied back to me) thinking he would want to get to the bottom of this and I gave him Bud Gregg's contact phone numbers - and Bud was going to give him phone numbers to the big exec's at State Farm in Illinois who would have been willing to speak with him about it. He never called Bud. In fact, I learned from Bud Gregg no one from snopes.com ever contacted anyone with State Farm. Yet, snopes.com issued a statement as the 'final factual word' on the issue as if they did all their homework and got to the bottom of things - not!
Then it has been learned the Mikkelson's are jewish - very Democratic (party) and extremely liberal. As we all now know from this presidential election, liberals have a purpose agenda to discredit anything that appears to be conservative. There has been much criticism lately over the internet with people pointing out the Mikkelson's liberalism revealing itself in their website findings.. Gee, what a shock?
So, I say this now to everyone who goes to www..snopes.com to get what they think to be the bottom line facts...'proceed with caution.' Take what it says at face value and nothing more. Use it only to lead you to their references where you can link to and read the sources for yourself. Plus, you can always google a subject and do the research yourself. It now seems apparent that's all the Mikkelson's do. After all, I can personally vouch from my own experience for their 'not'
fully looking into things.
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Snopes tries to be honest, not perfect, and the Mikkelsons make no bones about the fact that people should not take even their debunking as the final word. They even have a section of purposely preposterous stories to show the credulous the error of their ways.
BFD.
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Snopes jumped the shark about a year ago. I don't know exactly what happened to them but they went from seemingly unbiased results to very biased opinions. I don't bother with them anymore.
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Isn't it amazing that liberals will always sacrifice their business and integrity for their failed ideology?
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Who the hell uses snopes as an credible reference?
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Who the hell uses snopes as an credible reference?
http://www.snopes.com/photos/accident/tulsacrash.asp
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=white&GSby=1981&GSbyrel=in&GSdyrel=in&GSob=n&GRid=19201514&
Certainly not normal people.
(warning: Links graphic and disturbing to some sensibilities)
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Snopes is to urban legends as wiki is to encyclopedias.
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Snopes is to urban legends as wiki is to encyclopedias.
Honestly, neither should be used.
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Wiki is handy on SOME things........ credible?? Maybe, maybe not depending on the subject. Either one calls for one to use their head and look in other directions
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Who the hell uses snopes as an credible reference?
People who believe everything they find on wiki. :whatever:
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There might be a few academics here on this site who might look at Wikipedia as one source, then corroborate whatever they've read elsewhere before writing about it and crediting their sources.
But what kind of accuracy is demanded here, to the point of excluding Wiki or any other web-based source?
It's just ONE source of many that are available.
Whether Snopes or Wiki or any other source contains bias or bullshit doesn't really matter, unless we're puttin' shit out there that has to withstand peer vetting.
There might be a few of those folks gracing these pages, but I'm bettin' that most of us don't fit in that category.
Ain't nuttin' wrong with Wiki or with Snopes that a little independent corroboration can't fix.
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Snopes and wiki are both worthless with regards to political content, and that includes global warming and other environmental issues.
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http://www.snopes.com/photos/accident/tulsacrash.asp
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=white&GSby=1981&GSbyrel=in&GSdyrel=in&GSob=n&GRid=19201514&
Certainly not normal people.
(warning: Links graphic and disturbing to some sensibilities)
Cool
That's a hellava way to cash in your chips.
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My, my, lots of smug disdain for a bunch of people who don't seem to be able to suggest a better alternative...
:rotf:
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My, my, lots of smug disdain for a bunch of people who don't seem to be able to suggest a better alternative...
:rotf:
It is not so much "distain for a bunch of people...etc" as it is for a buch of folks who spend overtime trying to make lies the truth.
I know this is a stretch, but have you read "1984"?
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Sorry, my phrasing was ambiguous...the 'bunch of people who don't seem to have a more credible alternative' to offer against Snopes would be other posters in this thread, not the folks at Snopes.
Snopes is like anything else on the internet, and really doesn't pretend to be anything other than that - informed (and occasionally incorrectly informed) opinion, which does at least go to the additional step of debunking itself. My comment was that for all the haughty superiority and contempt expressed about it here, nobody seemed to be able to offer a link to a site that did a better job at what Snopes tries to do.
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Sorry, my phrasing was ambiguous...the 'bunch of people who don't seem to have a more credible alternative' to offer against Snopes would be other posters in this thread, not the folks at Snopes.
Snopes is like anything else on the internet, and really doesn't pretend to be anything other than that - informed (and occasionally incorrectly informed) opinion, which does at least go to the additional step of debunking itself. My comment was that for all the haughty superiority and contempt expressed about it here, nobody seemed to be able to offer a link to a site that did a better job at what Snopes tries to do.
So you have done the impossible and proved a negative. I'm impressed.
It makes me want to revisit when we had garbage dumps before we had landfills.
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If I have questions about an issue I will read everything I can find online about the issue. I can make up my own mind on if it is valid or not. Do you have money invested in snopes or something?
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Sorry, my phrasing was ambiguous...the 'bunch of people who don't seem to have a more credible alternative' to offer against Snopes would be other posters in this thread, not the folks at Snopes.
Snopes is like anything else on the internet, and really doesn't pretend to be anything other than that - informed (and occasionally incorrectly informed) opinion, which does at least go to the additional step of debunking itself. My comment was that for all the haughty superiority and contempt expressed about it here, nobody seemed to be able to offer a link to a site that did a better job at what Snopes tries to do.
Your answer is to be well read -- seek many credible sources to research the topic (those sources totally dependent on the issue being questioned) and then form an opinion on your own.
Looking for a link to some site to do the work for you is intellectual laziness at its finest.
:fuelfire:
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I consider Snopes not the best source. Now, don't get me wrong, I do enjoy reading about urban legends.
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I consider Snopes not the best source. Now, don't get me wrong, I do enjoy reading about urban legends.
Bunnies run Snopes.
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Bunnies run Snopes.
That explains a lot. Those soul damning bunnies.
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Snopes tries to be honest, not perfect, and the Mikkelsons make no bones about the fact that people should not take even their debunking as the final word. They even have a section of purposely preposterous stories to show the credulous the error of their ways.
BFD.
I agree. A few years back Mrs. Mikkelson and I exchanged an email or two...I think I might of submitted something to them for review...but what ever the reason was at the time, she seemed very down to earth and nice.
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If I have questions about an issue I will read everything I can find online about the issue. I can make up my own mind on if it is valid or not. Do you have money invested in snopes or something?
No, I just think there has been a lot of stupid whining about it in this thread. You guys are smarter than this (I hope). If you want to debunk the debunkers, show where they're actually wrong. Y'all seriously don't see how stupid it sounds when you CAN'T do that?! It's not just the pot calling the kettle black, it's more like the pot calling the somewhat-soiled dishrag black.
OK, so the alternative to Wiki is to go to an encyclopedia, a much-applauded analogy there, except that none of the critics seem to be able to name an alternative debunking resource equivalent to the 'Encyclopedia' part of that analogy, maiking it an Epic Fail as analogies go (Though I suspect that resource would be Lew Rockwell or similar nutters in one or two cases, not meaning you in particular but not naming names either).
It's pretty obvious Snopes kicked someone's sacred cow somewhere on their site, though nobody has really chosen to come right out and say which sacred cow it was, so it's kind of hard to put a finger on what the drop-dead issue is over a site that doesn't pretend to be the final word on anything. Aside from his indecipherable post about proving a negative, Undies for instance posted links that don't seem to debunk Snopes at all, just criticise their taste (I guess that was his point, if not it was too cryptic for me) for posting the accident pics that were indeed part of the email story they were addressing (and that story with those pics was certainly emailed around), without any comment to explain why he thought it was not truthful. Still, cryptic and irrelevant to the accuracy issue as it seemed to be, Undies at least managed to put links in about what presumably is one of his problems with the site, more than I can say for the rest of the critics.
It is what it is, just a couple of people trying to address whether various internet folklore and urban legends are true or not. Why is that so hard to deal with?
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Snopes has never pretended to be anything other than a small operation. Though why they put up with those bandwith bills, I can't figure.
No one should ever trust a single source on anything. Especially on the internet. It is silly to put more stock in the web page than the proprietors do.
One of my favorite sites is Neal's Nuze, from Neal Boortz. He has a really cool disclaimer at the top of all his pages. Which basicly says don't believe anything you hear or read without checking it first. You do otherwise, you might wind up investing in something a bit more stupid than a Nigerian Email.
So, Snopes is a good place to start, but it is not the place to stop.
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(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/snopes.png)
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(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/snopes.png)
Thanks for the laugh today. I needed one......
:rotf: :rotf: :rotf: :rotf:
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(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/snopes.png)
FANTASTIC!!!! (LOL)
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The first 2 sentences of the starting email's paragraph 2 read:
"But for several years people tried to find out who exactly was behind snopes.com. Only recently did Wikipedia get to the bottom of it - kinda makes you wonder what they were hiding."
My very hasty look at the internet led me to an article identifying the people "behind snopes.com" dated 2001 (Google: salon.com mieszkowski mikkelson debunk) and another from 2004 (Google: snopes.com the ultimate debunker). So the part about trying for years to find out who's behind snopes.com is ridiculous and it was my first clue that the email was written by a crackpot.
This following sentence from the starting email leads me to believe hat the whole purpose of the writing was political:
"Then it has been learned the Mikkelson's are very Democratic
(party) and extremely liberal."
What an absurd sentence if you have no proof.Back it up! Who learned it? How did they learn it? What proof is there? Could it have been the omnipresent "THEY" who found out? The always unidentified "THEY" who are used to prove things?
The elections over so forget it. McCain lost and it's doubtful snopes.com had much to do with it.
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The first 2 sentences of the starting email's paragraph 2 read:
"But for several years people tried to find out who exactly was behind snopes.com. Only recently did Wikipedia get to the bottom of it - kinda makes you wonder what they were hiding."
My very hasty look at the internet led me to an article identifying the people "behind snopes.com" dated 2001 (Google: salon.com mieszkowski mikkelson debunk) and another from 2004 (Google: snopes.com the ultimate debunker). So the part about trying for years to find out who's behind snopes.com is ridiculous and it was my first clue that the email was written by a crackpot.
This following sentence from the starting email leads me to believe hat the whole purpose of the writing was political:
"Then it has been learned the Mikkelson's are very Democratic
(party) and extremely liberal."
What an absurd sentence if you have no proof.Back it up! Who learned it? How did they learn it? What proof is there? Could it have been the omnipresent "THEY" who found out? The always unidentified "THEY" who are used to prove things?
The elections over so forget it. McCain lost and it's doubtful snopes.com had much to do with it.
WOW you're quite the detective. You're and editor on Wiki ain'tcha?
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Quote from RANDY: "WOW you're quite the detective. You're and editor on Wiki ain'tcha?"
No, Randy. I "ain't" an editor. Just trying to add my thoughts. I laughed and laughed at your 2nd grade wit, though. You're quite the comedian, "ain'tcha"?
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Noting your quoting abilities, I can see your extreme intelligence screaming through. Quit looking at my wits. You're making me uncomfortable with your leering.
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Noting your quoting abilities, I can see your extreme intelligence screaming through. Quit looking at my wits. You're making me uncomfortable with your leering.
Why is it that the DUmmies who come here always have trouble with the quote feature.
They had the same deficiency at TOS as well.
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This following sentence from the starting email leads me to believe hat the whole purpose of the writing was political:
"Then it has been learned the Mikkelson's are very Democratic
(party) and extremely liberal."
What an absurd sentence if you have no proof.Back it up! Who learned it? How did they learn it? What proof is there? Could it have been the omnipresent "THEY" who found out? The always unidentified "THEY" who are used to prove things?
What is absurd is your grasping st straws asusmption that it can't be found out whether a Person is some ignorant Libtard or not.
One of our members back during the '04 election did a little digging via the internet and discoverd that a DU member claiming to be a "lifelong Republican who is voting for Kerry"...was actually a lifelong DEMOCRAT who'd NEVER voted Republican.
So your claim that the discovery of the founders of snopes being Liberal is "absurd" is itself absurd.
And it's amazing how you libs never have a problem with the invisible "they" and "unnamed sources" when it comes to trying to smear or insinuate things about a Republican...yet when one of your own Libtard brethren is outed...it's suddenly something evil and sinister.
The elections over so forget it. McCain lost and it's doubtful snopes.com had much to do with it.
Did anyone here blame some less than credible "debunking" site for McCain losing?
No one here has.
That's an "absurd" assumption on your part Libtard.
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Ah,
a new liberal defender of the (un)faith.
Welcome.
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Wikipedia got to got bottom of it? If they did, it was probably deleted soon thereafter. Wikipedia does not investigate anything. It merely reports on what other more reliable sources have already reported. Wikipedia does not even consider itself to be a reliable source.
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The first 2 sentences of the starting email's paragraph 2 read:
"But for several years people tried to find out who exactly was behind snopes.com. Only recently did Wikipedia get to the bottom of it - kinda makes you wonder what they were hiding."
My very hasty look at the internet led me to an article identifying the people "behind snopes.com" dated 2001 (Google: salon.com mieszkowski mikkelson debunk) and another from 2004 (Google: snopes.com the ultimate debunker). So the part about trying for years to find out who's behind snopes.com is ridiculous and it was my first clue that the email was written by a crackpot.
This following sentence from the starting email leads me to believe hat the whole purpose of the writing was political:
"Then it has been learned the Mikkelson's are very Democratic
(party) and extremely liberal."
What an absurd sentence if you have no proof.Back it up! Who learned it? How did they learn it? What proof is there? Could it have been the omnipresent "THEY" who found out? The always unidentified "THEY" who are used to prove things?
The elections over so forget it. McCain lost and it's doubtful snopes.com had much to do with it.
you want to try again, this time with cohesive thoughts perhaps?
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What is absurd is your grasping st straws asusmption that it can't be found out whether a Person is some ignorant Libtard or not.
One of our members back during the '04 election did a little digging via the internet and discoverd that a DU member claiming to be a "lifelong Republican who is voting for Kerry"...was actually a lifelong DEMOCRAT who'd NEVER voted Republican.
So your claim that the discovery of the founders of snopes being Liberal is "absurd" is itself absurd.
And it's amazing how you libs never have a problem with the invisible "they" and "unnamed sources" when it comes to trying to smear or insinuate things about a Republican...yet when one of your own Libtard brethren is outed...it's suddenly something evil and sinister.
Did anyone here blame some less than credible "debunking" site for McCain losing?
No one here has.
That's an "absurd" assumption on your part Libtard.
Ah, the Jeb Eddy story. Fond memories.
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It is what it is, just a couple of people trying to address whether various internet folklore and urban legends are true or not. Why is that so hard to deal with?
*ahem*
So why, a generation later, does the Times begin an article by rebutting an assertion that the ad in question (watch it here) does not even make? Because 2008 is the year in which "fact checking" of political ads and statements became a full-blown journalistic fad. May it soon go the way of streaking and Mexican jumping beans.
The "fact check" is opinion journalism or criticism, masquerading as straight news. The object is not merely to report facts but to pass a judgment. The Washington Post's Fact Checker blog ends each assessment with between one and four "Pinocchios," just like movie reviewers giving out stars.
Like movie reviewing, the "fact check" is a highly subjective process. If a politician makes a statement that is flatly false, it does not need to be "fact checked." The facts themselves are sufficient. "Fact checks" end up dealing in murkier areas of context and emphasis, making it very easy for the journalist to make up standards as he goes along, applying them more rigorously to the candidate he disfavors (which usually means the Republican).
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122339946870411861.html
Just sayin...
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I thought just about everybody knew snopes was just a DNC propoganda factory disguised as some mom and pop start up internet site, despite what they says otherwise:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/fanniemae.asp
That's when they're lying about not being partisan. Someone sent me an e-mail listing all the deaths associated with the Clintons. Of course, someone else sent a link to Snopes saying that this was debunked. I went to the site and it was nothing more than Democratic talking points right from James Carville’s playbook.
http://www.modernconservative.com/metablog_single.php?p=219
Consider the wording of the Snopes claim "Have Your Yellowcake" , which would lead the reader to believe that Saddam Hussein was not trying to restart Iraq's nuclear program. It says nothing of the Duelfer Report which found damning evidence to the contrary. Babs is a Canadian transplant married to a California socialist. They supposedly are connected with the Annesburg Foundation as well, that's why libtards love snopes.
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Ah, the Jeb Eddy story. Fond memories.
Yes, outing Jeb pretty much put the nail in the coffin of my hopes to be a Wikipedia admin, but well worth it in the end.
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Yes, outing Jeb pretty much put the nail in the coffin of my hopes to be a Wikipedia admin, but well worth it in the end.
Why would that prohibit you from being an admin, Wiki is supposed to fair to all sides, right? :whatever:
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Why would that prohibit you from being an admin, Wiki is supposed to fair to all sides, right? :whatever:
um... yeah.