I also hear that there's this web site where you order books and DVDs and stuff and they like send them to you and all, like to your personal residence. And this other website where they auction off stuff online and you make bids and if you win you pay and they ship that stuff to your personal residence.

I'm sure the Washington Post will tell us all about those web sites soon.

Excuse me?

I've been reading Snopes for ages and know a little about them through folklore circles. Despite its ubiquity, most people don't know who runs Snopes or why. The post reported on it and gave some sense of the scale of the operation. I don't imagine the reporter thought he was breaking a story here. Neither did I; everybody here knows Snopes. Just struck me as the kind of mildly interesting thing folks might want to read to expand their knowledge of how a popular website got started and is run. I also enjoying knowing they met online.

But thanks for the drive-by snark.

Is there a website that'll tell me why matteo is such a dick?

I found it interesting that it's just 2 people, husband and wife.
Interesting to finally put an actual person to the name "Barbara."
Especially after the years that I've been directing my various relatives to her after receiving their endless forwarded chain emails.

I for one am dying a little inside now that I know that Sarah Palin doesn't believe in Demon Lizards.

Yea but she does believe that dinosaurs and humans co-existed.

I was on a.f.u. back in the day and almost met them one time they were coming through Chicago (alas, even then I was always the guy picking up the pieces for the neverending family crisis).

I think matteo was shitting on the ignorance of the American people there, not the post, but it did stink up the room a bit either way. Matteo, you should have realized this was from the Style section and not the news hole.

All this time I thought Snoop Dog was moonlighting as a research hero.

I'm envious of the new assistant they hired. That is a job I'd have dearly loved.

It does seem like it's tough to keep up with the volume and get the research done in a timely way. Kind of odd that the model hasn't expanded a bit to take advantage of crowd-sourcing? They have such an active forum community. You'd think that a few solid volunteer researchers would gradually emerge.

It never occurred to me that it was just two people. They put in a lot of work, clearly.

A few years ago on the Dr. Laura show some guy called up heartbroken upon discovering his wife had been cheating on him. Her infidelity was revealed after the guy had a plumber out to fix a blocked up toilet. The plumber noted that the problem was caused by condoms being flushed down the toilet. Problem being, the man and his wife didn't use condoms. Dr. Laura offered the man advice sincerely.

The story always sounded a bit off to me, and thanks to snopes, I found out Dr. Laura basically got Punk'd

I love Snopes and am pleased as punch that they're getting some big press without having to be something buzzworthy like a never-fact (or spell) -checked blog!
I always assumed that there might be more than Barb doing the work, but I keep reading only her entries when I'm looking for something so I kinda knew that they weren't that many working on the site. Still, Hubby, wife and assistant? Impressive.