Snopes.com is a Scam

[tuolumnejim]

Something I've know since I read the first or second link.

Link

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.

[DumbAss Tanker]

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.

[mamacags]

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.

[Lord Undies]

Isn't it amazing that liberals will always sacrifice their business and integrity for their failed ideology?

[formerlurker]

Who the hell uses snopes as an credible reference? 

[Lord Undies]

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)

[mamacags]

Snopes is to urban legends as wiki is to encyclopedias.

[formerlurker]

Snopes is to urban legends as wiki is to encyclopedias.

Honestly, neither should be used.   

[Thor]

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

[Chris_]

Who the hell uses snopes as an credible reference? 

People who believe everything they find on wiki.   

[Eupher]

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.

[thundley4]

Snopes and wiki are both worthless with regards to political content, and that includes global warming and other environmental issues.

[Servonaut]

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. 

[DumbAss Tanker]

My, my, lots of smug disdain for a bunch of people who don't seem to be able to suggest a better alternative...

 

[Lord Undies]

My, my, lots of smug disdain for a bunch of people who don't seem to be able to suggest a better alternative...

 

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"?

[DumbAss Tanker]

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.

[Lord Undies]

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.

[mamacags]

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?

[formerlurker]

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.

 

[Ptarmigan]

I consider Snopes not the best source. Now, don't get me wrong, I do enjoy reading about urban legends.

[dutch508]

I consider Snopes not the best source. Now, don't get me wrong, I do enjoy reading about urban legends.

Bunnies run Snopes.

[Ptarmigan]

Bunnies run Snopes.

That explains a lot. Those soul damning bunnies.

[RobJohnson]

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.

[DumbAss Tanker]

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?

[Baruch Menachem]

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.