Snopes, also known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is a website dedicated to determining the truth about many urban legends, Internet rumors, email forwards, and other such stories of uncertain or questionable origin. Snopes is run by Barbara and David Mikkelson, a couple from California who married after meeting on the newsgroup alt.folklore.urban. The couple also founded the San Fernando Valley Folklore Society, who were credited as the owners of the site until 2005.[1] The site is organized according to topic and includes a messageboard where questionable stories and pictures may be posted. Image File history File links Snopes_logo. ... “URL” redirects here. ... A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos and other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML... An urban legend or urban myth is similar to a modern folklore consisting of stories often thought to be factual by those circulating them. ... Official language(s) English Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Largest metro area Greater Los Angeles Area  Ranked 3rd  - Total 158,302 sq mi (410,000 km²)  - Width 250 miles (400 km)  - Length 770 miles (1,240 km)  - % water 4. ... alt. ... San Fernando Valley from its southwestern edge. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Main site

Snopes aims to debunk or confirm widely spread urban legends. The site is referenced by numerous other sites^{[citation needed]}, directing people to more information about various hoaxes, especially in regard to chain e-mails. Although they research their topics heavily and provide references when possible, not all of their sources (especially those which are personal interviews, phone calls, or e-mails) are fully verifiable. Where appropriate, pages are generally marked "undetermined" or "unverifiable" if the Mikkelsons feel there is not enough evidence to either support or disprove a given claim. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Chain letter. ... For Works Cited lists, see Citation. ...

The site is sometimes confused with The AFU and Urban Legends Archive [2], a similar site run by the denizens of alt.folklore.urban, which houses that newsgroup's FAQ. AFU and Urban Legends Archive is a website dedicated to urban legends. ... alt. ... FAQ is an abbreviation for Frequently Asked Question(s). The term refers to listed questions and answers, all supposed to be frequently asked in some context, and pertaining to a particular topic. ...

The Mikkelsons have stressed the reference portion of the name Urban Legends Reference Pages, indicating that their intention is not merely to dismiss or confirm misconceptions and rumors but to provide evidence for such debunkings and confirmations as well.^[1] In an attempt to demonstrate the perils of over-reliance on authority, the Mikkelsons created a series of made-up urban folklore tales which they termed The Repository of Lost Legends.^[2] (The name was chosen for its acronym, T.R.O.L.L.) One fictional legend averred that the children's nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence" was really a coded reference used by pirates to recruit members. (This parodied a real false legend surrounding "Ring a Ring o' Roses"'s link to the bubonic plague.) Although the creators were sure that no one could believe a tale so ridiculous — and had added a link^[3] at the bottom of the page to another page explaining the hoax, and a message with the ratings saying "Note: Any relationship between these ratings and reality is purely coincidental." — eventually the legend was featured as true on an urban legends board-game and TV show.^[4] Whether this meant their plan backfired or succeeded is a matter of opinion. A Do not feed the troll image In Internet terminology, a troll is someone who comes into an established community such as an online discussion forum, and posts inflammatory, rude, repetitive or offensive messages designed intentionally to annoy or antagonize the existing members or disrupt the flow of discussion, including... A nursery rhyme is a traditional song or poem taught to young children, originally in the nursery. ... See also Sing a Song of Sixpence, a Sesame Beginnings book. ... Ring a Ring o Roses or Ring Around the Rosie is a nursery rhyme or folksong and playground game that first appeared in print in 1881 but was recited to the current tune at least as early as the 1790s. ... The bubonic plague or bubonic fever is the best-known variant of the deadly infectious disease caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis. ...

The name "Snopes" comes from the name of a family in the works of writer William Faulkner.^[5] William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American novelist and poet whose works feature his native state of Mississippi. ...

Forums

The ULRP has a reasonably active forums community, its users referring to themselves as "snopesters". David and Barbara Mikkelson are active participants, with David going by the name "snopes" (lowercase s) and Barbara going simply as "Barbara". The forums have a variety of subforums, which are split between discussion of urban legends and general talk threads. The current forums have been around since December 2006 and are powered by vBulletin. Since its debut, the site has always had some type of forum.^{[citation needed]} An Internet forum, also known as a message board or discussion board, is a web application that provides for online discussions, and is the modern descendant of the bulletin board systems and existing Usenet news systems that were widespread in the 1980s and 1990s. ... December 2006 is the twelfth and final month of the year and will begin in 2 day(s). ... vBulletin (abbreviated as vB) is a commercial Internet forum package produced by Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd. ...

Criticisms

Snopes has been the target of several criticisms from other media sources:

1) In 2001, an anonymous article was written called “When the Debunkers Print Bunk”, which accused snopes.com or writing entirely fictitious articles that later made up the TROLL section of their archives. According to the article (which has been re-posted on numerous websites), the reason it was so hard to overlook the gag articles in the TROLL section was that it had made people who read them skeptical of their serious articles. The article also produced harsh words for the Mikkelsons’ technique if the bunk articles were intended to teach people about trusting what they read.

Soon after the article was printed, people who looked into the article’s claims further began finding serious fallacies in facts presented on the serious articles, as well as rudeness directed at complaints about Mikkelson’s tactics, which included entire forum threads. Barbara Mikkelson’s final word on the matter was “The bottom line is, don’t trust us,” which was hosted on their site as a reply to the controversy it caused with readers.

2) In 2002, reporter John Berlau wrote a piece about snopes.com that was printed in several newspapers, as well as countless websites in which he accused snopes.com of political biases that favored the Republican party, including articles they printed about former president that were questionable, such as a claim that Clinton had hung the American flag subordinate to an American one on a trip to Vietnam, based on an article by Geoff Metcalf.

Berlau also brought up several incidents where the Mikkelsons showed unprofessional journalisms, such as interviews where they were rude to the other parties involved, in particular over requests for retractions. In some incidents, the person asking for the retractions had emailed snopes three times prior to the interview and their emails were not answered or honored. Such as CNN and NPCR

3) In 2003, a second article called “Debunking the Debunkers” circulated the inernet, written by Sean-Paul Kelly, the chief editor for online journal the Agonist after the Agonist had been humiliated by changes made to their article about the flight of the Bin Laden family- along with several other publications that had quoted their take on the claim. In the article, Kelly claims that the Mikkelsons made the caches of the original article inaccessible (including removing it from search engines) and refused to honor requests that an original be put up as validation for the people who quoted it. Kelly eventually found the article on an archive, which is now hosted by the Agonist.

4) In 2002 and 2004, NPCR broadcasted that they suspected snopes of fabricating their own urban legends and sending them out in their newsletter to spread them so they can be debunked on their site. In the segments (both conducted by Peter Flathery), Folklorists and political experts alike gathered and talked about stories that they could not find an existence of, prior to the snopes.com newsletter, which had led the to suspect that one or both of the Mikkelsons made it up.

5) In 2005, snopes released an article called “Vitamin See” that stated you are no longer allowed to buy vitamins unless you act immediately. The article offended much of the medical community who called it “disinformation” and blasted claims made in their debunking as “ridiculous“. To complicate matters even further, health officials informed medical sites that they were never reached for comment by fact-checkers for snopes, and had never made several of the comments that appeared in their article. The Mikkelsons were challenged to defend their article on the radio, but never accepted and eventually the article was removed.

See also

• MythBusters and Penn and Teller: Bullshit!, two television series that debunk myths and urban legends
• The Straight Dope, a popular question-and-answer newspaper column that often covers urban legends

MythBusters is an American popular science television program on the Discovery Channel starring special effects experts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, who use basic elements of the scientific method to test the validity of various rumors and urban legends in popular culture. ... Penn & Teller: Bullshit! (2003-) is a Showtime Channel TV program shown in the United States, hosted by professional magicians Penn Jillette and Teller. ... Cecil Adams is the pen name of the author of The Straight Dope since 1973, a popular question and answer column published in The Chicago Reader, syndicated in thirty newspapers in the United States and Canada, and available online. ...

References

http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/235 -2005 reprint of "when the Debunkers write Bunk" (Original rquested, please relace with it if you find it)

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_12_18/ai_84396670/pg_1 -archive of the John Berlau article.

http://www.agonist.org/archives/007922.html#007922 -Debunking the Debunkers

http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=181 -Codex reaction to "Vitamin See"

http://www.theomnivore.com/IAHF_vs_Snopes_Feb_2005.html -Transcropt of radio challenge to the Mikkelsons.

External links

• Urban Legends Reference Pages, the Snopes main site
• ULMB Wikitory, the "unofficial reference pages on the snopes.com message board."