I am glad to have snopes available. Frequently, when I receive forwarded e-mail messages that don't "smell right", I check snopes and find the item in question.

As noted above, snopes does not claim to be the final authority on anything. But they do cite their references.

I will say that I was *very* disappointed when snopes itself perpetrated a hoax on its own site. They did an item claiming that the animal that portrayed the horse "Mr. Ed" (in the old American TV show of the same name) was actually a zebra. They cited all sorts of arguments as to how the stripes on the animal disappeared in the broadcasting process. You had to click the right link before you came to the point where they confessed that they were pulling your leg. They made the argument that they were warning you that you shouldn't trust anyone blindly, not even them. It's a valid warning, to be sure, but the effect it had on me was to make me think, whenever I check snopes, "Wait a minute...is this another one of their hoaxes?"

Don