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

[EE2016]

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.

So many couples came from that board. I think we joked it was a dating forum at some point.

Well Barbra did a lot of the best articles on the site, when they divorced that stopped. I think after a while he either changed the name on them or redid them in some and didn't credit her. She did so much and he pretty much pretended she did nothing.

Then we have the thing where posters did a bunch of research in posts, those posts deleted and an article put up with no credit. That happened to so many posters that I think the majority who did some great research just stopped doing so as their hard work basically was stolen and any evidence deleted.

Snopes ( Dave ) is a shady man and yeah it's weird that there were some great things that came from what became a toxic place.

 

[Travis]

Never stop posting.

Also, holy crap, a wild Travis appeared!

The Wild Travis will travel sixty kilometers in a day to get to the laptop. Which is guarded by hyenas. Not the animals, but a motorcycle gang out of Tucson named Hyenas. Fortunately the Wild Travis is in spring plumage and can distract them.



Nice to see you again too.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

FACT CHECK: TRUE

I'm honestly not at all surprised. I used to be a member of the board back in the day and, while it was generally a friendly place, Mikkleson himself was a huge dick.

Most relevant to this article was something that several members pointed out a few times. What used to happen (I'd honestly be a little surprised if it still didn't) was that he or his then-wife would post a myth or claim of some kind as a discussion thread. Because the board was full of people who were internet-savvy, from a wide variety of backgrounds, and who liked investigating this kind of thing, within usually a few hours, there would be dozens of replies with various debunkings of parts of the myth. Discussion between members would then help to narrow things down until there was something concrete. Mikkleson would then basically type up the thread as an article, citing the same sources other people had found, and even duplicating images posted to the threads - all without attribution or any hint that it wasn't all his or his then-wife's work. The few times that people complained* he simply pointed to the membership agreement/copyright notice which said that the site owned anything posted on it and reserved the right to reproduce it. Technically true, but not exactly in the spirit of what they wanted you to think the board was.

It goes further, too. Because, while people weren't particularly happy about this, the board was a product of the old internet days and had that sort of "mom & pop geocities page" kind of feel. Like it was a hobby with no money behind it. But the last decade or so has been mired in scandals and controversies which I'm not going to bother to repeat here, but two salient facts emerged. Before the company brought on "tripled" the ad revenue from the site, Mikkleson's ex-wife sold her half of the company for several million dollars, and Mikkleson was in a wages dispute demanding a salary of a million a year - which necessarily implies that the yearly income was more than that.

So it's long been on my "unethical practices" list, and I'm 100% unsurprised that Mikkleson has engaged in plagiarism.

*Which wasn't as often as it should have been because there was a weird mixture of hero-worship of him and fear of the banhammer for even saying something mildly critical.

 

[theprestige]

Why would Snopes be any different?

I'll give you a clue. What do you think people who donate money to these outlets actually want out of these outlets? Do you think their goal is actual impartiality? And do you think these outlets strive to please their donors first, or their readers first?

I think that's unfair. I've donated to Snopes in the past, when I had reason to believe they were being reasonably competent and reasonably impartial.

I still donate to Wikipedia, because I still believe they are reasonably competent and reasonably impartial*. If their overall quality and dispassionate stance went out the window, I'd stop donating in a heartbeat.

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*Yes, I know Wikipedia isn't perfect, and there's a lot not to like. I still think that on balance it's much better to have it than not.