A friend sent me a link to Snopes article and noted that JavaScript is used to prevent people from selecting text on their pages. It looks like they’re using a pretty dumb trick:
document.onmousedown=disableselect
You can still select all and copy. You just can’t select portions of the text unless you disable JavaScript.
I also noticed that Snopes has eliminated the bylines for the article writers. I find that a bit odd, not only because they used to be there, but also because some care was taken to make the bylines clever and pithy. I tried to find some examples of the old bylines, but I see that Snopes.com blocks archive.org as well.
The Snopes.com Wikipedia article doesn’t mention any changes to the site in recent times. I wonder if it’s just going the way of lots of enthusiast driven sites, where the only way to make a living is to lard the site user-hostile ads? (See also: Football Outsiders.) Anyone have any scoop on Snopes.com? It’s a shame to see what was once one of my favorite sites seemingly regress.
Update: Pulled up from the comments — XKCD on Snopes.
Another update: Some Snopes articles are really just ads.
April 22, 2008 at 1:18 pm
I think Snopes lost all of their credibility when they were pushing adware (Zango) in their advertising. All of a sudden they stopped being a place we could send the newbies to.
As usual, XKCD summed it up brilliantly: http://xkcd.com/250/
April 22, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Yeah, I got the impression they sold out a while ago. It was a good idea but they lost a lot of credibility with their choices in online advertising technologies, etc.
April 22, 2008 at 2:59 pm
I run the Israeli equivalent of snopes.com and this is why I am so sensitive to what’s happening there.
I have totally trusted them (I don’t belive I am writing this in past tense) but now I will have to put on my skepticism when I read their recommendations.
April 22, 2008 at 9:52 pm
That anti-select script has been there for as long as I can remember.
April 23, 2008 at 2:35 am
Aristotle, this is Socrates. And I remember when Snopes had copyable text without turning off Javascript.
April 23, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Thank god for greasemonkey and noScript. 🙂
August 24, 2008 at 12:15 am
In Firefox you can also select with the keyboard using caret browsing (F7 key).
June 23, 2011 at 12:34 am
I can’t seem to be able to select any article text on snopes using caret browsing. The page layout is throwing off navigation.