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Did you know that Breitbart is now literally in the White House? Ever heard of Steve Bannon? This is not a fringe thing. This is how the American people voted! It is very easy to find critical Breitbart articles about Snopes: http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/12/22/fact-check-snopes-fact-checker-arturo-garcia-is-an-anti-trump-blm-supporting-progressive/. 2601:280:5800:F990:456A:9F3D:3FAA:13D ( talk) 23:40, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
Read the entire NYT article. It's important because of claims
I think the brief debunking of the Soros claim should be slightly expanded, if you have to read the cite to understand why the sentence is there in the first place. Anmccaff ( talk) 16:25, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
All of Snopes’s revenue — Mr. Mikkelson says he doesn’t know what it is — come from ads. Facebook is not paying for its services. Nor is the billionaire George Soros funding the site, although that is sometimes asserted in anti-Snopes stories., I think adding that, as a quote -it's short enough- would be enough. Anmccaff ( talk) 23:14, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
Note that the statement, while from Snopeshisownself, is actually sourced from the NYT. "We" aren't relying on Mr. Mikkelson's own self-assesment; the NYT may or may not be.
I think keeping something like the current article is the best approach. Simply stating the Times judgement as simple fact, without suggesting its possibly naive source would be bad; removing the NYT, a generally strong source would be bad: and sourcing Mikkelson directly without mentioning that the NYT piece seemed to validate him would be bad. This is about as POV-free as this can get, given Wiki's mooncalf rules about what it sees as "OR". Anmccaff ( talk) 15:45, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
Why anyone would let Kim LaCapria tell them what's true or false is beyond me. TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 03:05, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
Forbes expose from today: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-daily-mail-snopes-story-and-fact-checking-the-fact-checkers/#2c81c4c91e02 2601:280:5800:F990:6070:7099:B19E:9F31 ( talk) 04:03, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
Forbers 'contributors' are not doing anything in Forbes's voice. They are, in essence, bloggers. Note the little quote under the blogger's name 'Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.' Dbrodbeck ( talk) 12:11, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
I've been looking, on and off, for a reliable source that mentions the criticism of Snopes and the Soros myth; so far, no joy.-- Jim in Georgia Contribs Talk 16:03, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
I see no consensus for these changes. Please gain consensus before making such large changes. Thank you. Dbrodbeck ( talk) 20:47, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
I think these are legitimate concerns that the readers may want to be informed. SCIense ( talk) 03:58, 30 March 2017 (UTC)In short, when someone attempted to fact check the fact checker, the response was the equivalent of “it's secret.” It is impossible to understate how antithetical this is to the fact checking world, in which absolute openness and transparency are necessary prerequisites for trust. How can fact checking organizations like Snopes expect the public to place trust in them if when they themselves are called into question, their response is that they can’t respond.
... In fact, this is one of the reasons that fact checking organizations must be transparent and open. If an organization like Snopes feels it is ok to hire partisan employees who have run for public office on behalf of a particular political party and employ them as fact checkers where they have a high likelihood of being asked to weigh in on material aligned with or contrary to their views, how can they reasonably be expected to act as neutral arbitrators of the truth?
Can you think of some kind of compromise where his concerns are mentioned as an informative remark at least? SCIense ( talk) 05:03, 30 March 2017 (UTC)At the end of the day, it is clear that before we rush to place fact checking organizations like Snopes in charge of arbitrating what is “truth” on Facebook, we need to have a lot more understanding of how they function internally and much greater transparency into their work.
Here is another media that also agrees with Kalev Leetaru that the lack of transparency by Snopes is a concern. [1]
Right-wing conspiracy theory website Infowars said: "Snopes is a bias [sic], far-left outfit. It is not a responsible 'fact-checker'." The first statement is false. I checked it. The second, I'm afraid, is kind of true. ... When Facebook sides with Snopes and its lack of transparency, it runs the risk of being accused of peddling fake news by the very sites that generated the problem in the first place.
(emphasis added) P.S. BTW, here is an article about being a Forbes contributor. [2] [3] Not only is it hard to become a contributor, contributors are "required to stick strictly to their area of expertise"; otherwise, editors take down the article. This means that Kalev Leetaru is not merely a "blogger" and Forbes considers him to be possessing the expertise in the article that he had written, including his criticism about Snopes. SCIense ( talk) 05:05, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
We pay hundreds of contributors based on the size of the audience they attract. What does that mean? Each contributor gets paid a certain amount, call it X, for every one-time monthly visitor to their page. If that same visitor reads another of their posts during the course of the month, the contributor gets 20X, notice it's not saying based on their expertise, or their accuracy, it's how many folk they drag in the door. And, again linked from the piece you just cited, the unpaid contributors
find association with our brand furthers their media career in other ways (books, magazine articles, etc). It's a business model, based on draw and exposure. Certainly they aren't going to let anyone do something actionable or embarrassing, but it's still arms-length from Forbes proper. Anmccaff ( talk) 05:52, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
(emphasis added) I would appreciate it if you could add some text regarding the black box model to inform the public that the aforementioned common assumptions cannot be trusted. SCIense ( talk) 06:47, 31 March 2017 (UTC)In fact, when I asked several colleagues for their thoughts on this issue this morning, the unanimous response back was that people with strong self-declared political leanings on either side should not be a part of a fact checking organization and all had incorrectly assumed that Snopes would have felt the same way and had a blanket policy against placing partisan individuals as fact checkers. ... Even my colleagues who work in the journalism community and by their nature skeptical, had assumed that Snopes must have rigorous screening procedures, constant inter- and intra-rater evaluations and ongoing assessments and a total transparency mandate.
Maybe we can create a new "Transparency" section instead of updating the existing "Accuracy" section.Sure. So go find better sources talking about their transparency (or lack thereof) and we'll make a section on it. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 12:19, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict)
Please read WP:OWN.Are you seriously complaining that I actually responded when you pinged me? Seriously? When you ping someone at your talk page, you should expect a response. That's the whole point of pinging people. I am, frankly, flabbergasted that anyone would actually invite another editor to their talk page to a discussion like that, and then complain about their participation in that discussion, especially after I made it explicitly clear that I will no longer participate in it. If you honestly believe that my behavior is that poor, I encourage you to start a thread at WP:ANI about it and see if the community agrees with you. This is the second time you have cast aspersions on me, and I would like to remind you that continuing to do so is a violation of our civility policy. Either take your complaints to ANI, or stop making them.
I also counselled him to wait before re-engaging in this discussion until WP:RS-compliant sources which were persuasive of his point were available.Indeed you did. Right where you expressed remorse that only unreliable sources were questioning the reliability of snopes, a point to which I responded by pointing out that this is "unfortunate" only in the context of a desire to push an unsupported POV, whereas in the context of maintaining the verifiability and accuracy of information in this article, is, instead evidence that we should not give weight to such a POV. While I appreciate your refusal to actually use sources which the consensus here has determined to be unreliable, that does not excuse the fact that you made it quite clear that you agree wholeheartedly with those sources and wish for a way to get their concerns into the article.
I'm not going to get into a circular and probably futile argument with you about the slant in snopes.com. You don't see it, I do, and it's WP:OR either way.No, it is not. Your "way" is OR and supported entirely by unreliable sources. My "way" is supported by reliable sources, and in lockstep agreement with them.
Either please stop denying you came onto my user page...I explicitly admitted that I commented on your user page in my last comment here with the text " I responded once because you pinged me,". You would do well to either read my comments, or at the very least, to stop making accusations which are trivial to disprove. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:16, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
The "Accuracy" section in this article relies too much on David Mikkelson's assessment of his own Web site's objectivity and lack of political slant. Just as we rightly reject the Daily Mail "expose" on snopes.com's Mr. Mikkelson and members of his staff on grounds including WP:SENSATION. we have to make sure that we're not relying on Mikkelson's own opinion of his staff's objectivity and the accuracy of his Web site. Factcheck.org not only vouches for Mikkelson - fine and good, secondary sources can do that - they quote him on his own veracity and objectivity, which is WP:UNDUE and considering Factcheck.com's reliance on snopes.com for their own operations ("We even link to Snopes.com when it’s appropriate rather than reinvent the wheel ourselves, which we consider high praise."), possibly WP:INDY as well.
It is allowable to mention that Factcheck.org verified the correctness of several snopes.com articles about prominent figures in politics, but I'm really uncomfortable that they go farther and quote him on how objective he is, and the absolute side issue that Mikkelson's (now former) wife and (now former) snopes.com staffer is a Canadian citizen (the implication being that Canadians and other non-US citizens cannot have strong opinions about US politics - a premise falsifiable by reading foreign press coverage of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton). Reliance on that claim from the same source (factcheck.org) is also WP:UNDUE and probably bad under WP:INDY as well.
I don't object to proof of citations of
WP:RS-compliant sources attesting to snopes.com's objectivity and lack of a political agenda, but we need more than Factcheck.org quoting David Mikkelson on how clean his own operation is to support that, when they admit they rely on him for information they use in their own operations. Even if Factcheck.org had made more than a cursory survey of snopes.com's evaluation of Web site stories concerning recent politics, their independence from snopes.com when they depend on snopes.com to fact-check instead of doing it themselves, as their name implies, is questionable.
loupgarous (
talk)
15:53, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
Other than your questions about sources, what are your problems with accuracy?-- Jim in Georgia Contribs Talk 18:31, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
When you have a secondary source published by an organization like Factcheck.org that depends on the subject of that source, snopes.com, for part of its product (fact-checking), that's potentially a profound conflict of interest.That is a profound mischaracterization. To go from "We sometimes link to them when they've already covered an issue," to "We rely on them to inform [a significant] part of our content," is horribly fallacious. It also blatantly ignores other statements made, such as "Snopes.com does take on some claims in the political realm. That has given us an opportunity to evaluate the Mikkelson’s work from time to time. We have found it solid and well-documented." which was made immediately preceding the quote you pulled. Furthermore, using a backlink checker to check for links to snopes.com from factcheck.org produces very few results, and using google to search for mentions of "snopes" on factcheck.org (search using the text:
"snopes" site:factcheck.org
) shows less than 650 mentions.If Factcheck.org were ever to discover something snopes.com got badly wrong, how likely would they be to publish that finding and potentially discredit much of their own product?Considering the fact that factcheck.org is, actually, a direct competitor to snopes.com, not to mention being in the business of correcting misinformation, I'd say the odds are quite high.
I was also startled to read, in a wikipedia article, anyone being allowed to describe themselves (Mr. Mikkelson) and the processes of their business (snopes.com) in glowing terms without appropriate weighting of those comments, and by that I mean Kalev Leetaru's comments in Forbes.com.These were quotes published (and thus vetted) by factcheck.org. It is our reliance on them, coupled with the distinct lack of any contradictory statements in the article that informs our judgements that the statements are due. Furthermore, WP:GEVAL directly addresses the question of why we don't counter every quote with a contradictory quote. If you can establish the existence of doubt about snopes' reliability in a significant number (say, three or four) of reliable sources, then the question of their accuracy opens up, and the article by Leetaru would carry enough weight to merit inclusion.
The WP:PUS entry on Forbes.com is an advisory guideline, not a flat prohibition on using those blogs, but a strong advisory that paid staff don't write every Forbes.com blog.You should read the discussion above. I'm not aware of anyone claiming that the Forbes article is unreliable because it was published on Forbes. The closest I've seen is the dismissal of claims that it's reliable because it was published by Forbes, due to the way Forbes handles those writer they list as "contributors" (which is the difference between saying "this is untrue because X said it" and "just because X said it doesn't make it true".) Furthermore, a number of other reasons were given as to why that is not a reliable source, not least of which is that it never actually draws any conclusions, and the logic contained within is extraordinarily vapid. To suggest that David's reticence to comment on his divorce is indicative of some defensiveness surrounding the way he runs his business, or to imply that snopes' refusal to dox their own employees (who, it must be stated, receive death threats) necessarily means that they are hiding a political bias is extremely poor logic. Then there's the further fact that the article was a follow-up to a Daily Mail article, which any reasonable person would assume to be full of crap until proven otherwise (something the Leetaru fails to do, or even attempt).
When someone who founded and runs a realtime index of world's news media and academic literature has such significant concerns about snopes.com's fact checking"Such significant concerns" that the conclusion of the article is that he can't say anything about their accuracy? Note that he never actually attempted to check their accuracy, and his article does not, in any way, address their accuracy. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:10, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
I am not touching this, but I will say: Don't be surprised when this talk thread and your edits to the cited section cause a shitstorm.
"To suggest that David's reticence to comment on his divorce is indicative of some defensiveness surrounding the way he runs his business, or to imply that snopes' refusal to dox their own employees (who, it must be stated, receive death threats) necessarily means that they are hiding a political bias is extremely poor logic."
because "shitstorm" isn't an appropriate term to drag into an already emotional discussion on one of our talk pages.I wasn't aware that this discussion was emotional. I can tell you that I haven't been feeling any notable emotions about it, aside from a touch of amusement at the quality of arguments you have presented here, and an intellectual curiosity at the difference between your comments on this matter and the comments that inspired me to compliment you on your talk page a while back. If you are feeling particularly emotional about this, then I would like to say that dropping the subject as you have indicated is, in fact, a very wise choice. I will, however, bear in mind that you prefer that others exercise a level of political correctness in their dealings with you, and refrain from using four letter words where they might offend you in the future.
Dr. Leetaru at no time asked David Mikkelson to dox his employeesNo, he asked for more detailed information about them, something which any reasonable employer with employees who receive death threats as a result of their work would look askance at, and almost certainly see as a sideways attempt at 'digging up dirt' on them. Perhaps my word choice of "doxxing" wasn't the best, as doxxing has specific meanings, but replacing it with "outing" (a word which is often held to be synonymous with "doxxing") should clarify any misunderstandings. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:32, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Hello, I've added a section on the lawsuit and crowdfunding, attempting to be as NPOV as possible. Constructive criticism and edits cheerfully accepted. Mr. Swordfish ( talk) 14:49, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
Maybe George Soros will do it for us.Ha! Am I psychic, or what? ;) ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 18:40, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
I suppose I won't be allowed to use this [4] because it's the Daily Mail. Can I use this [5] which reports on the Daily Mail article? Roberttherambler ( talk) 00:13, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
This section was recently deleted, citing WP:NOTNP. I'm not sure that the section violated this policy, but don't want to unilaterally revert before hearing other opinions. What do the other editors think? Should this section be restored? Mr. Swordfish ( talk) 14:25, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
I reverted an edit which apparently felt a cite was needed that Snopes was a widely-used resource for validating and debunking
urban legends and similar stories in American popular culture
I did not, and do not, think this is something which needs a cite in the lead, any more than any other sky-is-blue, grass-is-green observation would, whether or not the cite immediately following it didn't explicitly support it, and summarized the revert with: (Reverted good faith edits by Leitmotiv (talk): I think this is in the "the sky is blue" category. (TW))
and followed on to L's talk page with {{tq}I think their wide acceptance is such a commonplace fact that a cite isn't really needed there}}. Anmccaff (talk) 01:23, 28 October 2017 (UTC)}}
This was followed by a revert, and an [
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk:Leitmotiv&curid=17440246&diff=807452715&oldid=807452697 reply on his talkpage of You still need a citation, because that type of language is presumptuous. Leitmotiv (talk) 01:31, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
. The summary of the revert, which is in ciontravention of the usual BRD, was it's presumptuous and could be time sensitive, citation needed, stop edit warring. Wikipedia doesn't presume audience sizes)
The cite (immediately following the removed assertion, remember) explicitly says "the most widely known resource..." Anmccaff ( talk) 02:07, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
The
webby page, in fact does not say, as our article does, By mid-2014, Barbara Mikkelson had not written for the site "in several years"[1]
The source says:
But with the shift to addressing fast-flying web news “ephemera,” Mikkelson was, by mid-2014, overwhelmed. Barbara Mikkelson had stopped writing for the site, citing health issues. (They have since divorced, Barbara has not been editorially involved for “several years,” and no longer holds an ownership stake in the site, David says.) “It was pretty much, ‘I can’t keep doing this on my own,’” Mikkelson says. “It wasn’t really tenable.”
Now, this appears to have been written last year, in 2016, so the "several years" goes back from then, the time of the interview, not 2014.
Anmccaff (
talk)
00:46, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Yes, we damned well can, if there is no reputable source disagreeing with it, and other reputable sources agreeing with it. Anmccaff ( talk) 03:33, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
critics claim something bad" do not satisfy WP:NPOV, particularly when the source attributes the claim to "viral emails", aka lies. A claim about an organization run by identified individuals is false unless accompanied by plausible evidence. The not-so-clever word play of "but you can't prove the claim is false" does not work at Wikipedia. A claim in an article is an assertion of a probably correct fact (unless the article is about the claim). If a claim is not at least probably correct, the article has no business mentioning it ( WP:DUE). Johnuniq ( talk) 04:31, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
(Undid revision 810422008 by Anmccaff (talk) are you retarded?- I used the same exact source as existed on the page before. stop edit warring and take it to the talk page.
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 |
Did you know that Breitbart is now literally in the White House? Ever heard of Steve Bannon? This is not a fringe thing. This is how the American people voted! It is very easy to find critical Breitbart articles about Snopes: http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/12/22/fact-check-snopes-fact-checker-arturo-garcia-is-an-anti-trump-blm-supporting-progressive/. 2601:280:5800:F990:456A:9F3D:3FAA:13D ( talk) 23:40, 28 December 2016 (UTC)
Read the entire NYT article. It's important because of claims
I think the brief debunking of the Soros claim should be slightly expanded, if you have to read the cite to understand why the sentence is there in the first place. Anmccaff ( talk) 16:25, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
All of Snopes’s revenue — Mr. Mikkelson says he doesn’t know what it is — come from ads. Facebook is not paying for its services. Nor is the billionaire George Soros funding the site, although that is sometimes asserted in anti-Snopes stories., I think adding that, as a quote -it's short enough- would be enough. Anmccaff ( talk) 23:14, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
Note that the statement, while from Snopeshisownself, is actually sourced from the NYT. "We" aren't relying on Mr. Mikkelson's own self-assesment; the NYT may or may not be.
I think keeping something like the current article is the best approach. Simply stating the Times judgement as simple fact, without suggesting its possibly naive source would be bad; removing the NYT, a generally strong source would be bad: and sourcing Mikkelson directly without mentioning that the NYT piece seemed to validate him would be bad. This is about as POV-free as this can get, given Wiki's mooncalf rules about what it sees as "OR". Anmccaff ( talk) 15:45, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
Why anyone would let Kim LaCapria tell them what's true or false is beyond me. TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 03:05, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
Forbes expose from today: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-daily-mail-snopes-story-and-fact-checking-the-fact-checkers/#2c81c4c91e02 2601:280:5800:F990:6070:7099:B19E:9F31 ( talk) 04:03, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
Forbers 'contributors' are not doing anything in Forbes's voice. They are, in essence, bloggers. Note the little quote under the blogger's name 'Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.' Dbrodbeck ( talk) 12:11, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
I've been looking, on and off, for a reliable source that mentions the criticism of Snopes and the Soros myth; so far, no joy.-- Jim in Georgia Contribs Talk 16:03, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
I see no consensus for these changes. Please gain consensus before making such large changes. Thank you. Dbrodbeck ( talk) 20:47, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
I think these are legitimate concerns that the readers may want to be informed. SCIense ( talk) 03:58, 30 March 2017 (UTC)In short, when someone attempted to fact check the fact checker, the response was the equivalent of “it's secret.” It is impossible to understate how antithetical this is to the fact checking world, in which absolute openness and transparency are necessary prerequisites for trust. How can fact checking organizations like Snopes expect the public to place trust in them if when they themselves are called into question, their response is that they can’t respond.
... In fact, this is one of the reasons that fact checking organizations must be transparent and open. If an organization like Snopes feels it is ok to hire partisan employees who have run for public office on behalf of a particular political party and employ them as fact checkers where they have a high likelihood of being asked to weigh in on material aligned with or contrary to their views, how can they reasonably be expected to act as neutral arbitrators of the truth?
Can you think of some kind of compromise where his concerns are mentioned as an informative remark at least? SCIense ( talk) 05:03, 30 March 2017 (UTC)At the end of the day, it is clear that before we rush to place fact checking organizations like Snopes in charge of arbitrating what is “truth” on Facebook, we need to have a lot more understanding of how they function internally and much greater transparency into their work.
Here is another media that also agrees with Kalev Leetaru that the lack of transparency by Snopes is a concern. [1]
Right-wing conspiracy theory website Infowars said: "Snopes is a bias [sic], far-left outfit. It is not a responsible 'fact-checker'." The first statement is false. I checked it. The second, I'm afraid, is kind of true. ... When Facebook sides with Snopes and its lack of transparency, it runs the risk of being accused of peddling fake news by the very sites that generated the problem in the first place.
(emphasis added) P.S. BTW, here is an article about being a Forbes contributor. [2] [3] Not only is it hard to become a contributor, contributors are "required to stick strictly to their area of expertise"; otherwise, editors take down the article. This means that Kalev Leetaru is not merely a "blogger" and Forbes considers him to be possessing the expertise in the article that he had written, including his criticism about Snopes. SCIense ( talk) 05:05, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
We pay hundreds of contributors based on the size of the audience they attract. What does that mean? Each contributor gets paid a certain amount, call it X, for every one-time monthly visitor to their page. If that same visitor reads another of their posts during the course of the month, the contributor gets 20X, notice it's not saying based on their expertise, or their accuracy, it's how many folk they drag in the door. And, again linked from the piece you just cited, the unpaid contributors
find association with our brand furthers their media career in other ways (books, magazine articles, etc). It's a business model, based on draw and exposure. Certainly they aren't going to let anyone do something actionable or embarrassing, but it's still arms-length from Forbes proper. Anmccaff ( talk) 05:52, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
(emphasis added) I would appreciate it if you could add some text regarding the black box model to inform the public that the aforementioned common assumptions cannot be trusted. SCIense ( talk) 06:47, 31 March 2017 (UTC)In fact, when I asked several colleagues for their thoughts on this issue this morning, the unanimous response back was that people with strong self-declared political leanings on either side should not be a part of a fact checking organization and all had incorrectly assumed that Snopes would have felt the same way and had a blanket policy against placing partisan individuals as fact checkers. ... Even my colleagues who work in the journalism community and by their nature skeptical, had assumed that Snopes must have rigorous screening procedures, constant inter- and intra-rater evaluations and ongoing assessments and a total transparency mandate.
Maybe we can create a new "Transparency" section instead of updating the existing "Accuracy" section.Sure. So go find better sources talking about their transparency (or lack thereof) and we'll make a section on it. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 12:19, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict)
Please read WP:OWN.Are you seriously complaining that I actually responded when you pinged me? Seriously? When you ping someone at your talk page, you should expect a response. That's the whole point of pinging people. I am, frankly, flabbergasted that anyone would actually invite another editor to their talk page to a discussion like that, and then complain about their participation in that discussion, especially after I made it explicitly clear that I will no longer participate in it. If you honestly believe that my behavior is that poor, I encourage you to start a thread at WP:ANI about it and see if the community agrees with you. This is the second time you have cast aspersions on me, and I would like to remind you that continuing to do so is a violation of our civility policy. Either take your complaints to ANI, or stop making them.
I also counselled him to wait before re-engaging in this discussion until WP:RS-compliant sources which were persuasive of his point were available.Indeed you did. Right where you expressed remorse that only unreliable sources were questioning the reliability of snopes, a point to which I responded by pointing out that this is "unfortunate" only in the context of a desire to push an unsupported POV, whereas in the context of maintaining the verifiability and accuracy of information in this article, is, instead evidence that we should not give weight to such a POV. While I appreciate your refusal to actually use sources which the consensus here has determined to be unreliable, that does not excuse the fact that you made it quite clear that you agree wholeheartedly with those sources and wish for a way to get their concerns into the article.
I'm not going to get into a circular and probably futile argument with you about the slant in snopes.com. You don't see it, I do, and it's WP:OR either way.No, it is not. Your "way" is OR and supported entirely by unreliable sources. My "way" is supported by reliable sources, and in lockstep agreement with them.
Either please stop denying you came onto my user page...I explicitly admitted that I commented on your user page in my last comment here with the text " I responded once because you pinged me,". You would do well to either read my comments, or at the very least, to stop making accusations which are trivial to disprove. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:16, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
The "Accuracy" section in this article relies too much on David Mikkelson's assessment of his own Web site's objectivity and lack of political slant. Just as we rightly reject the Daily Mail "expose" on snopes.com's Mr. Mikkelson and members of his staff on grounds including WP:SENSATION. we have to make sure that we're not relying on Mikkelson's own opinion of his staff's objectivity and the accuracy of his Web site. Factcheck.org not only vouches for Mikkelson - fine and good, secondary sources can do that - they quote him on his own veracity and objectivity, which is WP:UNDUE and considering Factcheck.com's reliance on snopes.com for their own operations ("We even link to Snopes.com when it’s appropriate rather than reinvent the wheel ourselves, which we consider high praise."), possibly WP:INDY as well.
It is allowable to mention that Factcheck.org verified the correctness of several snopes.com articles about prominent figures in politics, but I'm really uncomfortable that they go farther and quote him on how objective he is, and the absolute side issue that Mikkelson's (now former) wife and (now former) snopes.com staffer is a Canadian citizen (the implication being that Canadians and other non-US citizens cannot have strong opinions about US politics - a premise falsifiable by reading foreign press coverage of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton). Reliance on that claim from the same source (factcheck.org) is also WP:UNDUE and probably bad under WP:INDY as well.
I don't object to proof of citations of
WP:RS-compliant sources attesting to snopes.com's objectivity and lack of a political agenda, but we need more than Factcheck.org quoting David Mikkelson on how clean his own operation is to support that, when they admit they rely on him for information they use in their own operations. Even if Factcheck.org had made more than a cursory survey of snopes.com's evaluation of Web site stories concerning recent politics, their independence from snopes.com when they depend on snopes.com to fact-check instead of doing it themselves, as their name implies, is questionable.
loupgarous (
talk)
15:53, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
Other than your questions about sources, what are your problems with accuracy?-- Jim in Georgia Contribs Talk 18:31, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
When you have a secondary source published by an organization like Factcheck.org that depends on the subject of that source, snopes.com, for part of its product (fact-checking), that's potentially a profound conflict of interest.That is a profound mischaracterization. To go from "We sometimes link to them when they've already covered an issue," to "We rely on them to inform [a significant] part of our content," is horribly fallacious. It also blatantly ignores other statements made, such as "Snopes.com does take on some claims in the political realm. That has given us an opportunity to evaluate the Mikkelson’s work from time to time. We have found it solid and well-documented." which was made immediately preceding the quote you pulled. Furthermore, using a backlink checker to check for links to snopes.com from factcheck.org produces very few results, and using google to search for mentions of "snopes" on factcheck.org (search using the text:
"snopes" site:factcheck.org
) shows less than 650 mentions.If Factcheck.org were ever to discover something snopes.com got badly wrong, how likely would they be to publish that finding and potentially discredit much of their own product?Considering the fact that factcheck.org is, actually, a direct competitor to snopes.com, not to mention being in the business of correcting misinformation, I'd say the odds are quite high.
I was also startled to read, in a wikipedia article, anyone being allowed to describe themselves (Mr. Mikkelson) and the processes of their business (snopes.com) in glowing terms without appropriate weighting of those comments, and by that I mean Kalev Leetaru's comments in Forbes.com.These were quotes published (and thus vetted) by factcheck.org. It is our reliance on them, coupled with the distinct lack of any contradictory statements in the article that informs our judgements that the statements are due. Furthermore, WP:GEVAL directly addresses the question of why we don't counter every quote with a contradictory quote. If you can establish the existence of doubt about snopes' reliability in a significant number (say, three or four) of reliable sources, then the question of their accuracy opens up, and the article by Leetaru would carry enough weight to merit inclusion.
The WP:PUS entry on Forbes.com is an advisory guideline, not a flat prohibition on using those blogs, but a strong advisory that paid staff don't write every Forbes.com blog.You should read the discussion above. I'm not aware of anyone claiming that the Forbes article is unreliable because it was published on Forbes. The closest I've seen is the dismissal of claims that it's reliable because it was published by Forbes, due to the way Forbes handles those writer they list as "contributors" (which is the difference between saying "this is untrue because X said it" and "just because X said it doesn't make it true".) Furthermore, a number of other reasons were given as to why that is not a reliable source, not least of which is that it never actually draws any conclusions, and the logic contained within is extraordinarily vapid. To suggest that David's reticence to comment on his divorce is indicative of some defensiveness surrounding the way he runs his business, or to imply that snopes' refusal to dox their own employees (who, it must be stated, receive death threats) necessarily means that they are hiding a political bias is extremely poor logic. Then there's the further fact that the article was a follow-up to a Daily Mail article, which any reasonable person would assume to be full of crap until proven otherwise (something the Leetaru fails to do, or even attempt).
When someone who founded and runs a realtime index of world's news media and academic literature has such significant concerns about snopes.com's fact checking"Such significant concerns" that the conclusion of the article is that he can't say anything about their accuracy? Note that he never actually attempted to check their accuracy, and his article does not, in any way, address their accuracy. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:10, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
I am not touching this, but I will say: Don't be surprised when this talk thread and your edits to the cited section cause a shitstorm.
"To suggest that David's reticence to comment on his divorce is indicative of some defensiveness surrounding the way he runs his business, or to imply that snopes' refusal to dox their own employees (who, it must be stated, receive death threats) necessarily means that they are hiding a political bias is extremely poor logic."
because "shitstorm" isn't an appropriate term to drag into an already emotional discussion on one of our talk pages.I wasn't aware that this discussion was emotional. I can tell you that I haven't been feeling any notable emotions about it, aside from a touch of amusement at the quality of arguments you have presented here, and an intellectual curiosity at the difference between your comments on this matter and the comments that inspired me to compliment you on your talk page a while back. If you are feeling particularly emotional about this, then I would like to say that dropping the subject as you have indicated is, in fact, a very wise choice. I will, however, bear in mind that you prefer that others exercise a level of political correctness in their dealings with you, and refrain from using four letter words where they might offend you in the future.
Dr. Leetaru at no time asked David Mikkelson to dox his employeesNo, he asked for more detailed information about them, something which any reasonable employer with employees who receive death threats as a result of their work would look askance at, and almost certainly see as a sideways attempt at 'digging up dirt' on them. Perhaps my word choice of "doxxing" wasn't the best, as doxxing has specific meanings, but replacing it with "outing" (a word which is often held to be synonymous with "doxxing") should clarify any misunderstandings. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:32, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Hello, I've added a section on the lawsuit and crowdfunding, attempting to be as NPOV as possible. Constructive criticism and edits cheerfully accepted. Mr. Swordfish ( talk) 14:49, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
Maybe George Soros will do it for us.Ha! Am I psychic, or what? ;) ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 18:40, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
I suppose I won't be allowed to use this [4] because it's the Daily Mail. Can I use this [5] which reports on the Daily Mail article? Roberttherambler ( talk) 00:13, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
This section was recently deleted, citing WP:NOTNP. I'm not sure that the section violated this policy, but don't want to unilaterally revert before hearing other opinions. What do the other editors think? Should this section be restored? Mr. Swordfish ( talk) 14:25, 30 August 2017 (UTC)
I reverted an edit which apparently felt a cite was needed that Snopes was a widely-used resource for validating and debunking
urban legends and similar stories in American popular culture
I did not, and do not, think this is something which needs a cite in the lead, any more than any other sky-is-blue, grass-is-green observation would, whether or not the cite immediately following it didn't explicitly support it, and summarized the revert with: (Reverted good faith edits by Leitmotiv (talk): I think this is in the "the sky is blue" category. (TW))
and followed on to L's talk page with {{tq}I think their wide acceptance is such a commonplace fact that a cite isn't really needed there}}. Anmccaff (talk) 01:23, 28 October 2017 (UTC)}}
This was followed by a revert, and an [
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk:Leitmotiv&curid=17440246&diff=807452715&oldid=807452697 reply on his talkpage of You still need a citation, because that type of language is presumptuous. Leitmotiv (talk) 01:31, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
. The summary of the revert, which is in ciontravention of the usual BRD, was it's presumptuous and could be time sensitive, citation needed, stop edit warring. Wikipedia doesn't presume audience sizes)
The cite (immediately following the removed assertion, remember) explicitly says "the most widely known resource..." Anmccaff ( talk) 02:07, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
The
webby page, in fact does not say, as our article does, By mid-2014, Barbara Mikkelson had not written for the site "in several years"[1]
The source says:
But with the shift to addressing fast-flying web news “ephemera,” Mikkelson was, by mid-2014, overwhelmed. Barbara Mikkelson had stopped writing for the site, citing health issues. (They have since divorced, Barbara has not been editorially involved for “several years,” and no longer holds an ownership stake in the site, David says.) “It was pretty much, ‘I can’t keep doing this on my own,’” Mikkelson says. “It wasn’t really tenable.”
Now, this appears to have been written last year, in 2016, so the "several years" goes back from then, the time of the interview, not 2014.
Anmccaff (
talk)
00:46, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Yes, we damned well can, if there is no reputable source disagreeing with it, and other reputable sources agreeing with it. Anmccaff ( talk) 03:33, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
critics claim something bad" do not satisfy WP:NPOV, particularly when the source attributes the claim to "viral emails", aka lies. A claim about an organization run by identified individuals is false unless accompanied by plausible evidence. The not-so-clever word play of "but you can't prove the claim is false" does not work at Wikipedia. A claim in an article is an assertion of a probably correct fact (unless the article is about the claim). If a claim is not at least probably correct, the article has no business mentioning it ( WP:DUE). Johnuniq ( talk) 04:31, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
(Undid revision 810422008 by Anmccaff (talk) are you retarded?- I used the same exact source as existed on the page before. stop edit warring and take it to the talk page.