Article quote: Only recently did Wikipedia get to the bottom of it
Couldn’t the same criticism be said about Wiki?
Last time I checked Wiki had “no big office of investigators and researchers, no team of lawyers”. Wiki is a free-for-all place that any random yahoo can post to.
They’re not especially rigorous about publishing errata. For example, Photograph shows small plane crashed into a tree next to a sign advertising flight lessons. They claim the photograph is genuine… and it is, as far as it goes. But I pointed out to them in an email, giving the second photograph in the article as evidence, that the photograph in question had been manipulated. Specifically, the signs could not have been read from the angle from which the photo was taken. So yes, it did happen. Yes, there’s a sign that is funny juxtaposed with the airplane in a tree. But no, the photo is not ‘real’, since the sign was manipulated.
First, they didn’t notice the manipulation themselves. (And they seem to make much of pointing out manipulation in other photos.) Second, they did not amend the article after the manipulation was pointed out to them. (I’m sure I’m not the only one to tell them.) So I’d say they’re pretty good at finding out things. But they cannot be relied upon as being the ‘last word’.
Read the very bottom of the Snopes article – the e-mail you quote has been very impressively debunked by another, unaffiliated site. Go read THAT if you hav eany doubts.
yes - they’ve always signed their articles, and there was no secret about it. the e-mail uses the typical conspiracy “secrets that we’ve finally found out” approach to make their target look duplicitous.
I’d regard Snopes like I’d regard the Straight Dope columns: usually pretty reliable and unbiased. And I don’t think you need a “big office of investigators and researchers” or “team of lawyers” to conduct this kind of research.
The e-mail doesn’t make sense anyway. Why would liberals want to make it seem like State Farm “pressured” Bud Gregg into taking down his sign? It would make a martyr out of him.
The irony runs thick and fast here. Throwing out Wikipedia as if it were some sort of infallible trove of scholarship…
This is the best part:
I’m not entirely sure the author of the e-mail understands what “face value” means.
The Mikkelsons have never tried to hide their identity. Wikipedia didn’t “get to the bottom of it,” they’ve always signed their articles.
I see that EJsGirl’s link pretty much eviscerates the whole chain mail, so there we go. The fact that it’s a (not very literate) chain mail should have told you that anyway. This line is funny, though:
It’s funny because it’s ironic. The purpose of the email is to try to discourage people from checking Snopes to vet right wing, “Obama is teh Muslim” chain mail screeds.
And that’s been verified by FactCheck.org. Just about everything in the anti-Snopes email is wrong, including the fact that “the Mikkelson’s are very Democratic (party)”… FactCheck.org reports that
[ul]
[li]“Barbara is a Canadian citizen, and as such isn’t allowed to vote here or contribute money to U.S.”[/li][li]"when [David Mikkelson] registered in 2000 he did so as a Republican. "[/li][/ul]
The email the OP received is so bad it’s almost funny.
I sent the Mikkelsons an email about eight years ago to ask if I could intern for them because I was so impressed with what they did. They said I’d have to sleep on the couch because they were just a couple running the site from their home. This was never a secret, and if it’s on Wikipedia, it was common knowledge to begin with.
Snopes isn’t perfect, but nothing else is either. They’ve become a target for the right wing in the last few years by virtue of debunking some of the more ridiculous rumors that were circulated about Kerry and Obama in the last few elections. Perhaps more insidiously, in the last election some liars started adding “this has already been checked by Snopes and they said it’s true!” to their emails.
Theyre generally okay and certainly dont hide their identities. I think the email you got is clearly trying to discredit them. Oh, the irony of a chain email trying to discredit those who discredit chain emails.
That said, they seem to have a political bias, as revealed by this incident with Micheal Moore. To their credit they eventually apologized to him, but I feel they did not handle it well and may have a bias against Moore or liberal politics.
>>"when [David Mikkelson] registered in 2000 he did so as a Republican. "
It’s not clear to me that either photo was manipulated. The sign seems to be in the same place in both photos. Compare by extending the line formed by the fence row.