Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

[JoeMorgue]

I meet my wife on the ULMB. It's not pleasant to have so much (valid, don't get me wrong) toxic news to come from something related to it.

There was a bunch of behind the scenes drama when the Mikklesons got divorced that started leaking into the rest of the site and I bailed when that happened because it just wasn't worth putting up with, especially since I was at that point already started posting and less and less as... well what's now happening here was happening there to be blunt about it.

 

[dudalb]

I can state with 100% certainty that no less than 3 articles on (or at least were on) the main Snopes page are literal copy-pastes of posts from the old Snopes ULMB message board presented as articles without permission or credit from members of the board.

I know because they are mine. And I know I was not alone in that.

I'm still bummed about how much damage Mikkleson's actions have done to the Snopes.... errr branding I guess you could call it because, and I can already see this from the usual suspects here, the only point may people are going to take away from this is "A well known fact checker is bad, ergo I now get to be more wrong about stuff and use that as an excuse" He will be the "Justin Smollett" of fact checkers everytime anyone is shown to be wrong about anything I am certain.

This. He has given ammo to those who hate Sniped becuase it exposes so much right wing BS as being right wing BS.

 

[theprestige]

I don't think for the vast majority of readers of snopes, the author is claiming it is their own. The byline is words many see as something to scroll past. I am under no obligation to read, "by" as a statement that the person is the sole source of ideas not cited. I'm not even sure most people are parsing the author of an article as a person with ideas.

It's not a lie if people don't notice or care if it's a lie?

 

[theprestige]

You are assuming that by publishing under the name they are stating that it is their own. There are other explanations like indifference, lazy or simply reject the notion that is what it means. Having writers in general structure the system around it being wrong is beneficial to them, but doesn't mean the person is lying.

It is lying if they say, "this is my original thought," certainly But to read the word "by" as doing that in all cases is absurd.

That's what the word "by" literally means in all cases.

 

[BobTheCoward]

It's not a lie if people don't notice or care if it's a lie?

It's not a lie if the parties don't buy into the agenda of those pushing for citing works.

 

[Ziggurat]

Self-plagiarism is a thing.

Sure, but it's still lying, because you're still presenting it as something new when it isn't.

 

[CORed]

Half the news arrticles I read about the same story may as well have been plagiarized for how identical they are. If you agree even with an op-ed, your retelling will be essentially the same.in content.

Whenever I do a web search on just about any topic, I will come across identical blocks of text, often several paragraphs, on multiple web sites. That doesn't make what Mikkelson did any more right, but he's nowhere near alone on the web in doing it.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Whenever I do a web search on just about any topic, I will come across identical blocks of text, often several paragraphs, on multiple web sites. That doesn't make what Mikkelson did any more right, but he's nowhere near alone on the web in doing it.

I regard "by" as the person who put in effort to assemble the text for them or someone else to upload to a website. I'm not assuming that this idea that these two concepts must relate is an original idea because they did not cite it.

 

[Warp12]

Snopes. So credible. LOL.

 

[JoeMorgue]

The irony is Snopes has several "Paper street" trap articles on the site specifically to catch people copypasting their articles.

You can't trademark/copyright/intellectual property a basic fact or knowledge, even if you "create" it. If I write an article about me being the first person to describe the new Western Pygmy 3 Toed Tree Beaver I can copywrite the article itself, but I don't own the fact that the Western Pygmy 3 Toed Tree Beaver exists and I can't sue anyone else for running a news article about this new animal being discovered.

 

[Thermal]

Whenever I do a web search on just about any topic, I will come across identical blocks of text, often several paragraphs, on multiple web sites. That doesn't make what Mikkelson did any more right, but he's nowhere near alone on the web in doing it.

That's how I meant it. The idea of Snopes is to dish out truth, and where they get it from I don't find tremendously important. Its not like a Pulitzer is being robbed from someone else. But agreed, as a matter of course, transparency and credit should be high on their priority list, just as a matter of integrity.

 

[RolandRat]

"After inquiries from BuzzFeed News, Snopes conducted an internal review and confirmed that under a pseudonym, the Snopes byline, and his own name, Mikkelson wrote and published 54 articles with plagiarized material. The articles include such topics as same-sex marriage licenses and the death of musician David Bowie.

Snopes VP of Editorial and Managing Editor Doreen Marchionni suspended Mikkelson from editorial duties pending “a comprehensive internal investigation.” He remains an officer and a 50% shareholder of the company.

“Our internal research so far has found a total of 54 stories Mikkelson published that used appropriated material, including all of the stories Buzzfeed shared with us,” Marchionni and Snopes Chief Operating Officer Vinny Green said in a statement.

"Let us be clear: Plagiarism undermines our mission and values, full stop," Marchionni added. "It has no place in any context within this organization."

Sounds like they're taking steps to get it sorted. That's a good thing, right?

 

[theprestige]

"After inquiries from BuzzFeed News, Snopes conducted an internal review and confirmed that under a pseudonym, the Snopes byline, and his own name, Mikkelson wrote and published 54 articles with plagiarized material. The articles include such topics as same-sex marriage licenses and the death of musician David Bowie.

Snopes VP of Editorial and Managing Editor Doreen Marchionni suspended Mikkelson from editorial duties pending “a comprehensive internal investigation.” He remains an officer and a 50% shareholder of the company.

“Our internal research so far has found a total of 54 stories Mikkelson published that used appropriated material, including all of the stories Buzzfeed shared with us,” Marchionni and Snopes Chief Operating Officer Vinny Green said in a statement.

"Let us be clear: Plagiarism undermines our mission and values, full stop," Marchionni added. "It has no place in any context within this organization."

Sounds like they're taking steps to get it sorted. That's a good thing, right?

Seems a bit basic to be hailed as a good thing. Making these kinds of noises in response to a PR incident is kind of the bare minimum of damage control.

 

[Travis]

Snopes. So credible. LOL.

Still credible. They check facts. This is a scandal of attribution. Which is a very different thing. If someone wants to claim that Dr Fauci is an investor in a murder factory they don't get to whine that Snopes can't be trusted when they knock it down as the lie it is.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Still credible. They check facts. This is a scandal of attribution. Which is a very different thing. If someone wants to claim that Dr Fauci is an investor in a murder factory they don't get to whine that Snopes can't be trusted when they knock it down as the lie it is.

Indeed. I bought out Dr Fauci and all those shares of MurderTech Inc are now mine. (My finance butler advised me to diversify my holdings so now I invest in both murder and killing. The two fields are separate, although people who don't know anything about finance frequently conflate them.)

 

[ServiceSoon]

Still credible. They check facts. This is a scandal of attribution. Which is a very different thing. If someone wants to claim that Dr Fauci is an investor in a murder factory they don't get to whine that Snopes can't be trusted when they knock it down as the lie it is.

Welcome back Travis. Been a while since I’ve seen you in these parts. Failure of attribution implies the absence of honesty, which implies a lack of applying basic/common moral and ethical principles. An organization checking facts must demonstrate these virtues or their credibility will be reasonably called into question.

 

[lionking]

Still credible. They check facts. This is a scandal of attribution. Which is a very different thing. If someone wants to claim that Dr Fauci is an investor in a murder factory they don't get to whine that Snopes can't be trusted when they knock it down as the lie it is.

Agreed

 

[kookbreaker]

Welcome back Travis. Been a while since I’ve seen you in these parts. Failure of attribution implies the absence of honesty, which implies a lack of applying basic/common moral and ethical principles. An organization checking facts must demonstrate these virtues or their credibility will be reasonably called into question.

Sounds like the right-wingers demand a purity test from fact-checkers that they themselves would never, ever, apply to their own works.

 

[theprestige]

Still credible. They check facts. This is a scandal of attribution. Which is a very different thing. If someone wants to claim that Dr Fauci is an investor in a murder factory they don't get to whine that Snopes can't be trusted when they knock it down as the lie it is.

They claim to check facts. How much of the fact-checking they claim to have done was actually plagiarized from the work of others? Work that may or may not be up to the standards we've come to take for granted from snopes.com? Standards which may not actually be as high as we've always assumed?

 

[ServiceSoon]

Sounds like the right-wingers demand a purity test from fact-checkers that they themselves would never, ever, apply to their own works.

Sounds like I want impartial and trust worthy sources whereas you want to create false narratives and mock those that think different than yourself and stereotype large groups of people.