A site would have to get quite big to have many casual readers from Fergus Falls (population ~13000) preapproving its German articles though, even taking into account some people remember meeting him and eventually got round to blogging about it.

Actually, it's interesting how little attention internet haters paid to Relotius, considering he was writing on polarising subjects, winning awards and he was arrogant enough to throw in details that were trivially proven wrong like election results as well as random deniable lies about the individuals he interviewed or said he interviewed. Perhaps writing in German and on things happening overseas helped shield him. But yeah, agree that internet haters are the way forward for crowdsourced factchecking (at least on subjects a bit less partisan than politics or sport where the haters can generally be relied on to reach some sort of consensus)