Every so often I end up at snopes.com to hear about some crazy email forward or urban legend. It’s ok content you can often find elsewhere but they’re the central place for much of it so it’s easy to find them. In the past few months however, I noticed they added an obnoxious popup ad (fired in Flash I would presume, which I don’t block) on top of all their articles. Today I noticed after following a link there that my back button no longer worked, redirecting me to the snopes page I was already on.
That’s pretty awful thing to do to users — forcing them to look at annoying flashing ads that jump out when their browser is set to avoid them and then not to let them leave.
A Whole Lotta Nothing 
I was done with Snopes long ago because of their attitude with Urban Legends, such as saying that everyone that said anything other than what they said was crazy. With the Moon Landing Hoax they say anyone who believes it was a hoax is crazy, even though there’s tonnes of evidence otherwise.
Wikipedia is way better.
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Ummm, Dante — I’ll give you that their take on urban legends is a bit tired, but if you want me to believe that they’re crazy because they believe we landed on the moon, then you’re out of luck… because anyone who’s willing to swallow the theory that it was a hoax is crazy.
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I don’t think anyone who believes we landed on the moon is crazy. It was just their attitude; how they just shot and dismissed all the accusations and evidence that it may have been faked. That’s bad science.
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(God, I hate when comment threads get derailed by conspiracy theory nuttiness.) Poor use of the word “science,” here, Dante, since science is nowhere close to your side of this argument. In fact, as a scientist, I’d say that it’s good science to dismiss moon landing doubters, since there’s not one shred of credible evidence to back their ideas up. (For example, how do you explain moon rocks? How about the laser reflectors that we still use regularly as targets to measure the distance to the moon?)
For your perusal: Conspiracy Theory: Did we go to the moon?
Moon Base Clavius
Cecil Adams
NASA’s perspective
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I agree with Dante. It’s wrong of Snopes to say that people who don’t believe we landed on the moon are crazy. They should use the proper terminology and say that such people are pitifully ignorant.
They have done a grave disservice to the crazy, who often believe things that are much more creative than that.
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