REJECT SCAMS & HOAXES!! FAST FACT-CHECKER TOOLS!!!

Posted:  13 Jan 13

1.  Purpose

To insure that all readers are aware of the invaluable fact-checking site, Snopes.com, which is a very effective and easy way to check the quality of information you receive in your emails and elsewhere.

To help protect our fellow humans and the quality and integrity of our "Human Knowledge Base (HKB)" against false, misleading, and even malicious information that might be taken as true -- thereby leading to erroneous thinking and action -- with often inconvenient, if not harmful, consequences.

2.  Background

If you are unfamiliar with Snopes.com, I'm about to do you a VERY big favor.

• This is one of the LEADING FACT-CHECKING sites, in the fact-checking industry.  
• I've used them for years and have found them to be fair and scientific in their analyses of dubious information that comes at us on the internet and elsewhere -- urban legends, hoaxes, unsigned or unauthenticated claims of "fact," etc.
• I have researched their reputation and their industry agrees with my very favorable observations.
• They publish a very informative weekly newsletter to which you may subscribe, to remain abreast of new scams, hoaxes and trash that poison the HKB.  If  you subscribe, you will be less likely to forget they exist or miss the valuable things they have to tell you, from time to time.
• I cannot publish their newsletters here, for your convenience, due to copyright considerations.


• You may occasionally hear people deride this fine FREE service, but consider who has something to lose as Snopes succeeds in their mission -- those who willfully put out bad information or who have something to gain from your believing it.

3.  Recommendation

I urge you to add this fine service to your "tool-kit," so you can judge whether dubious information that falls into your hands is true, false, or a mix.  Snopes will help.  And use them often.  I use them all the time (along with other fact-checkers) to be sure I don't add onto our vital networks what the old saying warns about when inputting to a computer: "garbage in, garbage out."

And, if you don't have a particular "factoid" in mind for checking, it is an interesting and entertaining site to casually explore to see what people are talking about -- you never know when you'll "hit the jackpot" on useful things you didn't even know to look for.

4.  A Practical Link-List For you

4.1  Lists and Reviews of Fact-Checking Websites -- this is a Google search which leads you to many of the fact-checkers available to us in the "electronic universe," INCLUDING independent reviews and critiques as to the reputations and reliability of many of those sites.

4.2  About the Snopes.com site, itself, it's already laid-out well, so you can easily find what you're looking for, but I would like to call your special attention to these useful and interesting pages:

• "What's New" -- scroll down this list to see their most recent accumulation of analyses.
• "25 Hottest Urban Legends" -- self-explanatory
• "FAQ" -- anticipates what you may be wondering about the service and helps you understand what the site does and does not try to do

4.3  Special Note:  Be careful how you interpret the answers to your queries.  If you only look at the top of their answer (and not all the way through), you will miss their points and may come away thinking they said a thing is true, when they're really saying it's false or a mixture of false/true.

4.4  ALWAYS SCROLL THROUGH THE WHOLE ANSWER TO YOUR SNOPES QUERY -- ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM.  Here's what I mean --

The Snopes site tends to answer you in this way

• FIRST it repeats the statement being investigated -- including many different variations in the way the material may appear on the Internet -- so you can clearly know what they are reporting on
• THEN it carefully analyzes these things for you
• FINALLY, they tell you their findings and conclusions -- the whole point of your search.

May we always try to avoid passing along bad information (setting-back human progress, each time it happens)

David Nelson

All Original Content © 2013 , The MENTOR Enterprises / ELMS, All Rights Reserved -- BUT, I hereby suspend those rights, to this extent: You may freely copy and pass this along, if you think it will do some good -- as long as it's free of charge, unchanged, and you include this statement.