Snopes.com Urban Legend Reference Pages

Reviewed by Jana Middleswart

Snopes.Com was founded by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson. It contains as searchable index of urban legends and examples of how the legends appear on the web within e-mail. The site does have advertising on each of the pages and also accepts donations in order to offset the cost of maintaining the page. As stated by the founders of the page they produce the page as a hobby and accept a limited amount of advertising to help defray the costs.

The site can be searched using either a category or a search term within the search box. Once a topic is located within the site, the page providing the information uses a “stoplight” feature (red = false, green = true, etc.) to classify the story as true or false. Pages also contain references to where the information contained on the page was found, therefore allowing a searcher to further study the topic on which they are interested.

Due to the fact that there are references listed on each of the pages, it appears the information contained on each of the pages is accurate. In addition to listing references on each page, there are dates indicating the original date of occurrence on the internet as well as a date the page was last updated.