# What’s behind Obama’s executive order against Snopes? \[Joke on Snopes site\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 11, 2016, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-behind-obama-s-executive-order-against-snopes-joke-on-snopes-site/748652 "2016-03-11T16:08:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Razncain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9d8465/32.png) [@Razncain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Razncain)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2016, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-behind-obama-s-executive-order-against-snopes-joke-on-snopes-site/748652/21 "2016-03-12T14:33:35Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Gee. I don’t happen to look at snopes all that often, but I just did. It has been re-organized and re-formatted beyond recognition from when I last looked there. Are the Mikkelsons even running it any more? I always thought it was just the two of them running the whole show. I think they are still there. But that’s what caught me off guard. It’s definitely not the same format that the Mikkelson’s had used when first launched and for many years to come afterwards that I was aware of. Articles by them that I had seen also didn’t use any fake bio’s. Not sure when they changed the format, but that Kim really got me good. Nor was I aware that they were doing entire spoof articles now too. Don’t get out in cyberspace much these days. I kind of wish they would at least leave those to the Onion and other sites that deal entirely in fake news, but still a big fan of Snopes. ---
**Author:** ![KLaCapria](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f6c823/32.png) [@KLaCapria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KLaCapria)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2016, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-behind-obama-s-executive-order-against-snopes-joke-on-snopes-site/748652/22 "2016-03-12T23:38:12Z")
> [@razncain](#): > > I think they are still there. But that’s what caught me off guard. It’s definitely not the same format that the Mikkelson’s had used when first launched and for many years to come afterwards that I was aware of. Articles by them that I had seen also didn’t use any fake bio’s. Not sure when they changed the format, but that Kim really got me good. Nor was I aware that they were doing entire spoof articles now too. Don’t get out in cyberspace much these days. I kind of wish they would at least leave those to the Onion and other sites that deal entirely in fake news, but still a big fan of Snopes. I joined just to reply and before you ask, vanity search 😃 Everything is the same at Snopes and we don’t do spoof articles. David’s bio was humorous so I took a cue from him. For some reason mine is the only one that makes people confused and or angry, but it’s just a parody of the stuff we see in our inbox. The site’s facelift was a necessary function of conversion. When I started working for Snopes in August 2014, we were not using a CMS. (The transition was very hard for me!) We faced a big challenge in marrying the extant Snopes pages with any new CMS. Magically in October some tech geniuses pulled it off for us in a single night. So we moved from a long outdated form of publishing to Wordpress. That’s the only difference. David hired me and Dan, me being from the ULMB since circa 2000 and Dan being a trusted collaborator of mine. In October, we inherited Brooke, who is also awesome and has been a quick study and fantastic resource to the site. So Dan, Brooke, and myself are contributing (with Brooke behind the scenes a lot in editorial) and David still does a lot. I just didn’t want anyone to think Snopes was taken over or changed a lot. Along with the October 2015 conversion came author attribution, but for over a year Dan and me were writing pages and no one noticed. It looks like all at once but we both started in August 2014. The TLDR is Snopes is mostly the same. We have three more people (me included) but nothing major has changed. Please feel free to ask questions. All our articles are non-spoof! ---
**Author:** ![Razncain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9d8465/32.png) [@Razncain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Razncain)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2016, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-behind-obama-s-executive-order-against-snopes-joke-on-snopes-site/748652/23 "2016-03-13T02:30:35Z")
> [@KLaCapria](#): > > Please feel free to ask questions. All our articles are non-spoof! Oh, it’s you, eh?! You’ve got some nerve showing up in these parts, and you know you got one coming, don’t ya? 😉 Excuse me, but I’m still wiping egg off my face. That was quick how fast you got here, methinks Snopes has eyes and ears everywhere, hell, not even the FBI catches up to someone this quick. I’m actually kindda afraid to ask any more questions after what you did to me last time, but here goes: How can the Mr. ED piece not be a spoof that **Telemark** linked up to in post 14? 😕 Nice to meet you, btw. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2016, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-behind-obama-s-executive-order-against-snopes-joke-on-snopes-site/748652/24 "2016-03-13T03:01:59Z")
> [@razncain](#): > > I’m actually kindda afraid to ask any more questions after what you did to me last time, but here goes: How can the Mr. ED piece not be a spoof that **Telemark** linked up to in post 14? 😕 That page was last updated in 2008. Snopes created a bunch of items in **T** he **R** epository **O** f **L** ost **L** egends and places a link to [this page](http://www.snopes.com/lost/false.asp) on each of them to instruct. ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2016, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-behind-obama-s-executive-order-against-snopes-joke-on-snopes-site/748652/25 "2016-03-13T06:06:07Z")
Thanks for sharing that, **KLaCapria**. We hope you stick around. And I thought your bio was pretty funny. ---
**Author:** ![Spud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spud/32/347_2.png) [@Spud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spud)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2016, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-behind-obama-s-executive-order-against-snopes-joke-on-snopes-site/748652/26 "2016-03-13T16:16:00Z")
> [@KLaCapria](#): > > All our articles are non-spoof! Except for the Lost Legends… I wrote one of them (Pirates). I was one of the very early “old regulars” but probably left there before you joined in in 2000. I was one of the original members of the SLC way back when there was a secret place to click on to access that forum. I even responded when the British School Kids posted. There used to be a “Pool” which started as a pool to see who could guess which already debunked legend would be asked about next. It later evolved into a “pool” that we in our online world hung around to chat, and at one point it was filled with beer… I believe in preparation for Y2K. I’ve thought about going back a few times but the board is so segmented I don’t know where to start and also the “in jokes” I used to know are mostly forgotten and I don’t know the new ones. Is Svenska Limpa still a thing there… or carpet tiles as an audio medium? I was active back when we used real names (with an internym) so they may not recognize me as Spud, but tell Barbara and David I said Hi. ---
**Author:** ![Accidental\_Martyr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ce7236/32.png) [@Accidental\_Martyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Accidental_Martyr)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2016, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-behind-obama-s-executive-order-against-snopes-joke-on-snopes-site/748652/27 "2016-03-13T22:35:40Z")
> [@Spud](#): > > Except for the Lost Legends… I wrote one of them (Pirates). > > I was one of the very early “old regulars” but probably left there before you joined in in 2000. I was one of the original members of the SLC way back when there was a secret place to click on to access that forum. I even responded when the British School Kids posted. There used to be a “Pool” which started as a pool to see who could guess which already debunked legend would be asked about next. It later evolved into a “pool” that we in our online world hung around to chat, and at one point it was filled with beer… I believe in preparation for Y2K. > > I’ve thought about going back a few times but the board is so segmented I don’t know where to start and also the “in jokes” I used to know are mostly forgotten and I don’t know the new ones. Is Svenska Limpa still a thing there… or carpet tiles as an audio medium? > > I was active back when we used real names (with an internym) so they may not recognize me as Spud, but tell Barbara and David I said Hi. I used to read the board (and post some) back in those days. I remember Svenska Limpa and the origin of NSFBK. ---
**Author:** ![Spud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spud/32/347_2.png) [@Spud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spud)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2016, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-behind-obama-s-executive-order-against-snopes-joke-on-snopes-site/748652/28 "2016-03-14T01:00:42Z")
> [@Accidental\_Martyr](#): > > I used to read the board (and post some) back in those days. I remember Svenska Limpa and the origin of NSFBK. Wow… you must be really old 😛 Good to see a few of us are still around. It is funny that I can’t remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, but I remember that it was Dennis in Frankfort aka DIF that kept posting about shadows in space more than 20 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2016, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-behind-obama-s-executive-order-against-snopes-joke-on-snopes-site/748652/29 "2016-03-17T15:15:50Z")
I had no idea the inclusion of more writers was that recent. I thought it had happened much earlier. The main issue I have with the site now is that it often spoils that something is a myth in the title. It was always fun playing the game of guessing. which of the urban legends would actually be true. Oh, and the weird news articles get mixed in, without making it clear that’s what they are. I do like that it works on Mobile now, though. And that, when I reported issues with the CMS conversion (the first time you tried), you backed out, fixed them, and then brought it back, fully functional. ---
**Author:** ![BeeGee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b5a626/32.png) [@BeeGee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeeGee)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2016, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-behind-obama-s-executive-order-against-snopes-joke-on-snopes-site/748652/30 "2016-03-17T17:35:08Z")
> [@Spud](#): > > Except for the Lost Legends… I wrote one of them (Pirates). > > I was one of the very early “old regulars” but probably left there before you joined in in 2000. I was one of the original members of the SLC way back when there was a secret place to click on to access that forum. I even responded when the British School Kids posted. There used to be a “Pool” which started as a pool to see who could guess which already debunked legend would be asked about next. It later evolved into a “pool” that we in our online world hung around to chat, and at one point it was filled with beer… I believe in preparation for Y2K. > > I’ve thought about going back a few times but the board is so segmented I don’t know where to start and also the “in jokes” I used to know are mostly forgotten and I don’t know the new ones. Is Svenska Limpa still a thing there… or carpet tiles as an audio medium? > > I was active back when we used real names (with an internym) so they may not recognize me as Spud, but tell Barbara and David I said Hi. Well, I remember you. No soap. Radio. ---
**Author:** ![KLaCapria](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f6c823/32.png) [@KLaCapria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KLaCapria)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2016, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-behind-obama-s-executive-order-against-snopes-joke-on-snopes-site/748652/31 "2016-03-18T00:33:04Z")
> [@razncain](#): > > Oh, it’s you, eh?! You’ve got some nerve showing up in these parts, and you know you got one coming, don’t ya? 😉 Excuse me, but I’m still wiping egg off my face. > > That was quick how fast you got here, methinks Snopes has eyes and ears everywhere, hell, not even the FBI catches up to someone this quick. > > I’m actually kindda afraid to ask any more questions after what you did to me last time, but here goes: How can the Mr. ED piece not be a spoof that **Telemark** linked up to in post 14? 😕 > > Nice to meet you, btw. Once a week or so I usually search my name because every so often someone pulls stuff like today, where my byline was spoofed by a spam site! 😮 You are correct, sorry, we do have _old_ spoof pages from TRoLL but we don’t currently publish satirical content aside from our bios 😃 And feel free to ask questions! > [@TroutMan](#): > > Thanks for sharing that, **KLaCapria**. We hope you stick around. > > And I thought your bio was pretty funny. Thanks 🙂 > [@BigT](#): > > I had no idea the inclusion of more writers was that recent. I thought it had happened much earlier. > > The main issue I have with the site now is that it often spoils that something is a myth in the title. It was always fun playing the game of guessing. which of the urban legends would actually be true. > > Oh, and the weird news articles get mixed in, without making it clear that’s what they are. > > I do like that it works on Mobile now, though. And that, when I reported issues with the CMS conversion (the first time you tried), you backed out, fixed them, and then brought it back, fully functional. We have a hard time balancing the way links render on FB and such without spreading false information inadvertently. So for a while we had to look at pages that say “Untrue thing!” and we had to make it clear what the truth status was to fit that. It kind of sucks but sometimes we have to arrange the pages just so now to ensure they aren’t creating opposite impressions on social media. My personal suggestion was to add “news” to status to avoid confusion but no one else liked that one 🙂 Converting to a CMS was a nightmare to start because most conversion processes are set up for newer structures, not our old .asp pages. It took years to find someone who was able to do it! ---
**Author:** ![joyfool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df788c/32.png) [@joyfool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joyfool)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2016, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-behind-obama-s-executive-order-against-snopes-joke-on-snopes-site/748652/32 "2016-03-18T01:41:48Z")
Since you don’t mind questions, will you guys ever have an app? Get on Facebook? It would be so great if snopes were easier to read on cells. And I was also around back before 2000. Hell if I remember my name then though. ---
**Author:** ![KLaCapria](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f6c823/32.png) [@KLaCapria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KLaCapria)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2016, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-behind-obama-s-executive-order-against-snopes-joke-on-snopes-site/748652/33 "2016-03-18T17:06:57Z")
> [@faithfool](#): > > Since you don’t mind questions, will you guys ever have an app? Get on Facebook? It would be so great if snopes were easier to read on cells. > > And I was also around back before 2000. Hell if I remember my name then though. We get asked about apps a lot, and we don’t have any opposition to apps or anything. However, when David called me it was literally him doing everything single handed (he has an assistant who reads mail and other stuff, but no one doing anything with content). I brought Dan with me, and like I said above we inherited Brooke. So it’s not like we have a giant team where we can do an app easily, it’s primarily David, his assistant, me, Dan, and Brooke doing everything there is to do. An app is sort of beyond our ken at this point. I was floored David did it all himself in the past. I mean, he did like 20 jobs. Sites our size have departments doing everything he did. We are on Facebook, we have been for some time: [snopes.com](https://www.facebook.com/snopes/?ref=bookmarks) 🙂 And now but just recently, we’re optimized for mobile. Our pages render like most others, but didn’t before October 2015! ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctor_jackson/32/32_2.png) [@Doctor\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2016, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-behind-obama-s-executive-order-against-snopes-joke-on-snopes-site/748652/34 "2016-03-18T20:34:34Z")
Welcome to our humble\* board! Thou art now both a Snoper and a Doper! \*The board is humble, the posters not so much… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-behind-obama-s-executive-order-against-snopes-joke-on-snopes-site/748652.md?page=1)