UselessDepartment rules
How these stories are told
Every Oops file uses the same simple recipe and the same house rules. Useless didn’t write them. He did nod at them, quite firmly.
Six parts, always in this order
- The great idea. What someone was trying to do, and why it made sense at the time. Every idea gets a fair hearing first.
- What actually happened. The real events, in order, taken from the sources.
- Where it went wrong. The why: the decisions, the engineering, the market or the timing.
- What changed. What happened afterwards, and the lessons or legacy. Where a lesson is our opinion rather than a sourced fact, the file says it’s the department’s view.
- The Useless Verdict. A last word from the acting head of department, usually at his own expense.
- The serious article. Every file ends with a link to the full, sourced history on its specialist site, which links back here. The detail, the myths and the references live there.
Six rules every file keeps
- It never makes things up. Every fact in a file is checked against the factual home and its sources. If we can’t check something, it doesn’t go in.
- Humour targets questionable decisions, never victims. We can laugh at a plan, a promise or a press release. We never joke about the people hurt or killed in accidents or disasters.
- It isn’t a second encyclopaedia. Each story has one factual home. The Oops file is a short companion that points there, and the factual home points back; neither repeats the other.
- Opinions are labelled. Facts come from the sources. When a file draws a lesson of its own, it says so: “the department’s view”.
- It tells the sad parts straight. When someone was hurt or killed, the file says so plainly and doesn’t joke about it.
- Useless’s verdicts are about Useless. The jokes at the end of each file are at his expense. He has agreed to this. He wasn’t listening, but he agreed.
Spotted a mistake?
An Oops Department that never made mistakes would be a bit rich. If you think a file has something wrong, please tell REALLYBYTE. Corrections to our own errors are always welcome.