In February 2017, a piece in Politico about the website The Gateway Pundit described it thusly....
Just so we're clear, Politico are talking about Gateway Pundit there, not Wikipedia.It was a banner moment for the decade-old website, known for reporting obvious hoaxes as legitimate news.......the site has published a number of obviously false stories, often deleting the posts after their source material is exposed as a parody, a hoax or just plain wrong.
On 23 February 2017, the Wikipedia editor Snooganssnoogans (T-C-L) added the following to the introduction of the Wikipedia article for The Gateway Pundit (T-H-L).....
Reference [7] was the Politico piece. References [8] to [11], while providing examples, are careful not to make blanket judgements.The website is known for publishing falsehoods and spreading hoaxes.[7][8][9][10][11]
On 16 August 2017 the Beckman Klein Centre (T-H-L) published a study, Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Its executive summary contains the following....
Despite their use of quotation marks, according to TDA the report's source of this information was apparently the Politico piece, which of course doesn't say those exact words Wikipedia does.These sites do not necessarily all engage in misleading or false reporting, but they are clearly highly partisan. In this group, Gateway Pundit is in a class of its own, known for “publishing falsehoods and spreading hoaxes.”
Despite the pretty long summary, this particular quote seemed attractive enough to make it into the brief news coverage of the study in Mother Jones on the day.
Having had a week to cogitate on it, in their "Analysis", The Washington Post's coverage of the study also similarly focused in on this aspect.....
They evidently liked it so much, it appeared in subsequent pieces in October 2017, suitably condensed toFourth on the list of most-shared sources among Trump supporters on Twitter was Gateway Pundit, a site especially notorious for trafficking in hoaxes and falsehoods.
Ever diligent, Snoog of course added these two pieces to the list of references supposedly backing his original Wikipedia edit, almost as soon as they appeared. (1)(2)
So, in conclusion, absent any other sources being found (and TDA seems to have been thorough), this mysterious Snoog fella seems to have quite deliberately used his knowledge of the slack practices of Wikipedia and those who use it, to turn what was a single opinion of one Politico journalist, into the settled view of a number reliable sources, which he has then in turn used to back up his original edit. This process is known as citogenisis - the use of Wikipedia to turn invented information into reliably sourced information, although in this case it's not so much invention, as misrepresentation.
Are their alternative explanations? Of course.....
1. Snoog might not have even been aware that his original edit represented a gross misuse of sources(*). It may be what they like to term, a "good faith" error. A simple check of his editing history, easily disproves that theory.
2. The precise match of Snoog's wording to that of the Beckman Klein Centre's study could just be a terrible coincidence. I'm no expert by any means, and I'm well aware the human mind handles such perceptions badly, but it seems at least unlikely, especially given Wikipedia's ubiquity.
3. The WaPo's view of what GP is known for, it being not an exact match to Snoog's wording, could be based on their own diligent research, and not the Snoog tainted summary of the Beckman Klein Centre's study. But given the timing of their reports, and what we know about the pressures journalists operate under today, it seems much more likely Snoog was the ultimate source.
At time of writing, Snoog's edit is still visible as the current version of that article's introduction, and he is still an active editor, untroubled by the cold dead hand of any Wikipedia administrator, the people who are, nominally at least, charged with upholding Wikipedia policy through the use of force (anyone can theoretically do so through the use of mere words, and in some cases if afforded due privelage, by undoing/changing edits)
* - For those wondering, according to actual Wikipedia policy, given he only had the one source to hand to support his text, here's what Snoog's original edit should have looked like....
That is, if consensus was found that the opinion of this one journalist was significant enough to include at all. And rather than include it in the introduction, it should have been included in the main article text, under a suitably titled section, like "Reception", so as to not give it undue prominence.According to Politico, The Gateway Pundit is "known for reporting obvious hoaxes as legitimate news."
Only if these "known for" type views become widespread in multiple reliable sources, can the sort of unqualified/unattributed edit Snoog made, be made. And it can only be made in the introduction, if that itself summarises greater detail surrounding these views already provided in the main article. If there's evident disagreement in sources, it is of course more complicated. Needless to say, as a mere Wikipedia editor, Snoog isn't meant to have any direct hand in that process, he is meant to be a passive element, the mere scribe of known history.
Being mere examples, the rest of his references should have only been included if it was deemed by consensus to be important to describe the specific incidents they report on, in the main body of the article. The typical way you judge that is if those examples have been mentioned in other sources as examples, rather than just first hand reporting. Otherwise, essentially, Wikipedia would just be a repository of news reporting merely mentioning the website, which policy is quite explicit about - "Wikipedia is not the news". Editorial judgement is crucial here, the goal being to ensure Wikipedia's use of such examples doesn't misrepresent the totality of views across all reliable sources, or give undue prominence to underreported incidents.
This is of course all theoretical - most editors on Wikipedia ignore these policies and their practices are closer to what Snoog does.