Snopes.com

"Snopes" redirects here. For the novels by William Faulkner, see Snopes trilogy.
Urban Legends Reference Pages (snopes.com)
Snopes logo
Web address www.snopes.com
Commercial? Yes
Type of site
 Reference pages
Registration Required only on forums
Owner Barbara and David P. Mikkelson
Created by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson
Launched 1995
Alexa rank
 2,613 (April 2014)[1]
Current status Active

Snopes.com /ˈsnoʊps/, also known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is a website covering urban legends, Internet rumors, e-mail forwards, and other stories of unknown or questionable origin.[2] It is a well-known resource for validating and debunking such stories in American popular culture,[3] receiving 300,000 visits a day.[4]

Snopes.com is run by Barbara and David Mikkelson,[5] a California couple who met in the alt.folklore.urban newsgroup.[6] The site is organized by topic and includes a message board where stories and pictures of questionable veracity may be posted. The Mikkelsons founded the San Fernando Valley Folklore Society and were credited as the owners of that site until 2005.[7]

History

David Mikkelson used the username "snopes" (the name of a family of often unpleasant people in the works of William Faulkner)[8][9] in the Usenet newsgroup alt.folklore.urban.[10] The Mikkelsons created the Snopes site in 1995,[11] and later worked on the site full-time.[6][9][11]

A television pilot based on the site, called Snopes: Urban Legends, was completed with American actor Jim Davidson as host, but major networks passed on the project.[9]

Main site

Snopes aims to debunk or confirm widely spread urban legends. The site has been referenced by news media and other sites, including CNN,[12] Fox News Channel,[13] MSNBC,[14] and Australia's ABC on its Media Watch program. Snopes' popular standing is such that some chain e-mail hoaxes claim to have been "checked out on 'Snopes.com'" in an attempt to discourage readers from seeking verification.[15] As of March 2009, the site had approximately 6.2 million visitors per month.[16]

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 confirmation as well.[17] 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.[18] The Mikkelsons have said many of the urban legends are mistakenly attributed because of common problems associated with e-mail signatures.[19]

Lost Legends

In an attempt to demonstrate the perils of over-reliance on the internet as authority, the Mikkelsons assembled a series of fabricated urban folklore tales that they term "The Repository of Lost Legends".[20] The name was chosen for its acronym, T.R.O.L.L., a reference to the early 1990s definition of the word troll, meaning an Internet prank, of which David Mikkelson was a prominent practitioner.[10]

One fictional legend alleged 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 the supposed connection of "Ring a Ring o' Roses" to the bubonic plague. Although the creators were sure that no one could believe a tale so ridiculous—and had added a link at the bottom of the page to another page explaining the hoax,[21] and a message with the ratings reading "Note: Any relationship between these ratings and reality is purely coincidental"—eventually the legend was featured as true in an urban legends board game and television show.[22] The television show, Mostly True Stories: Urban Legends Revealed, was shown to have been using information from Snopes when one of Snopes' invented "lost legends" appeared on the program as true; the repository thus served as an inadvertent copyright trap.[10]

Accuracy

Jan Harold Brunvand, a folklorist who has written a number of books on urban legends and modern folklore, considers the site so comprehensive as to obviate launching one of his own.[11]

David Mikkelson has said that the site receives more complaints of liberal bias than conservative bias,[23] but insists that the same debunking standards are applied to all political urban legends. FactCheck reviewed a sample of Snopes' responses to political rumors regarding George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, and Barack Obama, and found them to be free from bias in all cases. FactCheck noted that Barbara Mikkelson was a Canadian citizen (and thus unable to vote in US elections) and David Mikkelson was an independent who was once registered as a Republican. "You'd be hard-pressed to find two more apolitical people," David Mikkelson told them.[23][24]

Traffic and users

In mid-2013, Snopes.com's Alexa rating was 2,720, with the average user spending 1.83 minutes per day on the site and 27,272 sites linking in. Of the users, 79.5% originate from within the United States.[1] In 2010, the site attracted 7 to 8 million unique visitors in one month.[25]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Snopes.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-04-01.
  2. ↑ Snopes.com: Debunking Myths in Cyberspace National Public Radio August 27, 2005
  3. ↑ Neil Henry, American Carnival: Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media (University of California Press 2007), p. 285.
  4. ↑ David Pogue (July 15, 2010). "At Snopes.com, Rumors Are Held Up to the Light". The New York Times. Retrieved July 16, 2010.
  5. ↑ "Snopes". snopes.com.
  6. 1 2 Brian Stelter (April 4, 2010). "Debunkers of Fictions Sift the Net". New York Times. Retrieved April 5, 2010.
  7. ↑ "Messageboard post". snopes.com.
  8. ↑ "Frequently Asked Questions". Snopes. Retrieved 2006-06-09. What are 'snopes'?
  9. 1 2 3 Bond, Paul (September 7, 2002). "Web site separates fact from urban legend". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved July 17, 2012.
  10. 1 2 3 See Michele Tepper, "Usenet Communities and the Cultural Politics of Information" in David Porter, ed., Culture (1997) at 48 ("[T]he two most notorious trollers in AFU, Ted Frank and snopes, are also two of the most consistent posters of serious research.").
  11. 1 2 3 Seipp, Cathy (July 21, 2004). "Where Urban Legends Fall". National Review Online. Archived from the original on 23 July 2004. Retrieved 7 February 2014.
  12. ↑ Beth Nissen (2001-10-03). "CNN.com - Hear the rumor? Nostradamus and other tall tales". Archives.cnn.com. Retrieved 2009-06-07.
  13. ↑ "Teens Abusing Energy-Boosting Drinks, Doctors Fear - Health News | Current Health News | Medical News". FoxNews.com. 2006-10-31. Retrieved 2009-06-07.
  14. ↑ "Urban Legends Banned-April Fools'!". MSNBC. 2007-04-01. Retrieved 2009-06-07.
  15. ↑ "Urban Legends Reference Pages: Who Is Barack Obama?". Retrieved 22 January 2008.
  16. ↑ Reader's Digest: "Rumor Detectives: True Story or Online Hoax?". Retrieved 10 March 2009.
  17. ↑ "Urban Legends Reference Pages: (Frequently Asked Questions)". (Re "How do I know the information you've presented is accurate?".) Retrieved June 9, 2006.
  18. ↑ "Round Rock Gangs". Snopes. Retrieved 2009-05-03.
  19. ↑ Learn to Recognize Fraudulent Emails.Wells Fargo
  20. ↑ "Urban Legends Reference Page: Lost Legends". Retrieved 9 June 2006.
  21. ↑ "Urban Legends Reference Page: Lost Legends (False Authority)". Retrieved 9 June 2006.
  22. ↑ "Urban Legends Reference Pages: Humor (Mostly True Stories)". Retrieved 20 June 2006.
  23. 1 2 "Snopes.com". FactCheck. 2009-04-10. Retrieved 2011-11-04.
  24. ↑ "Fact-checking the fact-checkers: Snopes.com gets an 'A'". Network World. April 13, 2009.
  25. ↑ Stelter, Brian (April 4, 2010). "Debunkers of Fictions Sift the Net". The New York Times. Retrieved March 19, 2013.

External links

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