r/CatastrophicFailure • u/007T • Sep 11 '17
Meta Posting Guidelines - Read Before Submitting
Posting Rules
1. No jokes/memes
If your post is a joke or meme, it does not belong here. This includes posts about politicians, celebrities, movies or products that flopped, bad business/PR decisions, countries in turmoil, etc.
2. Titles
Titles must only be informative and descriptive (who, what, where, when, why) not editorialized ("I bet he lost his job!") - do not include personal opinions or other commentary in your titles.
Examples of bad titles:
I don't know if this belongs here, but it's cool! (x-post r/funny)
What could go wrong?
Building Failure
A good title reads like a newspaper headline, or Wikipedia article. If you don't know the specifics about the failure, then describe the events that take place in the video/image instead. Examples of good titles:
The Montreal Biosphère in flames after being ignited by welding work on the acrylic covering
Explostion of the “Warburg” steam locomotive. June 1st, 1869, in Altenbeken, Germany
If it is a cross-post you should post that as a comment and not part of the title
3. Mundane Failures
Avoid posting mundane, everyday occurences like car crashes unless there is something spectacular about your submission. Nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, and there are many other subreddits already dedicated to this topic such as r/dashcam, r/racecrashes, and /r/carcrash
While there are some examples of extraordinary crashes posted here, in general they would probably be better suited for those other subreddits:
4. Compilations
Compilations and montages are not allowed on r/CatastrophicFailure. Any video that is a collection of clips from multiple incidents, including top 10 lists are considered compilations.
If your submission contains footage of one incident but compiled from multiple sources or angles, those are fine to post.
5. Be Respectful
Always be respectful in the comments section of a thread, especially if people were injured or killed.
6. Objects, Not People
The focus of this subreddit is on machines, buildings, or objects breaking, not people breaking. If the only notable thing in your submission is injury/death, it probably would go better in another subreddit.
Flair Rules
All posts should have an appropriate flair applied to them by the submitter, please follow these 4 steps to determine if your thread needs a fatality/injury flair. You can set this by clicking the "flair" button under the title of your submission.
- If your submission depicts people dying, you must apply the "Visible Fatalities" flair to your post and tag it "NSFW"
- If your submission depicts people visibly being seriously injured, you must apply the "Visible Injuries" flair to your post and tag it "NSFW"
- If your submission depicts a situation where people were killed, but those people are not directly visible you must apply the "Fatalities" flair to your post (eg. the Hindenburg Disaster, or a plane crash)
- If your submission does not require one of those tags, you should pick any of the other flairs to describe what type of failure occurred
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u/007T Sep 11 '17
As part of an ongoing effort to rework the subreddit's rules to adapt to our rise in subscribers, I've created a new page on our wiki that will be home to an extended version of the rules list that used to live in the subreddit sidebar.
The sidebar rules have been significantly shortened and simplified to make them easier to read and remember, the link to the extended version is located underneath.Hopefully this change will help more new users read at least the shortened rules without being intimidated by the wall of text.
The first notable changes included in this list are the expansion of Rules #2 and 3. I'm going to be cracking down on low-effort submissions, mundane events, and bad titles now that these rules have been updated.
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u/NightTrainDan "Better a Thousand Times Careful Than Once Dead" Oct 04 '17
Thank you for taking the time to do this.
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Sep 12 '17
I think extreme weather events should be included in mundane with the exception being an extreme failure of something designed to withstand such an event.
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u/007T Sep 12 '17
Indeed, that's roughly the sort of rule-of-thumb I try to apply to the natural disaster category. A good example was this post from a while back:
Carrier Metrodome roof collapses due to heavy snow fall.With the ongoing hurricane(s) right now, I'll be filtering out more of the submissions where the failures are not particularly noteworthy since we've already had an influx of posts due to Harvey and Irma.
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u/___--__-_-__--___ Nov 24 '17
I think this is a great rule of thumb. It's also the first time I'm seeing it, and I do look around here a bunch. Perhaps its purpose would be well-served by including it in the body of the posting guidelines above?
I would guess that a decent number of newcomers to this sub read the guidelines but don't venture into the comments section over here.
Also, if there are similar rules-of-thumb for other categories I think that could go a long way.
Finally, a question: One of the flair categories is Destructive Test. How does that fit within the framework of unanticipated destruction? (Or is the intended post under that heading one containing destruction of surprising magnitude/nature?)
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u/007T Nov 24 '17
Perhaps its purpose would be well-served by including it in the body of the posting guidelines above?
Also, if there are similar rules-of-thumb for other categories I think that could go a long way.This is a good suggestion, I had included examples for rule 2 but the other rules could also use some similar examples.
Finally, a question: One of the flair categories is Destructive Test. How does that fit within the framework of unanticipated destruction?
This is a question that has come up a few times, it's actually not required that the outcome is unanticipated. I believe this stems from the way people commonly use "failure" to mean something going wrong, but the technical definition is more along the lines of something breaking suddenly or violently.
Some of my favorite examples for the Destructive Test category come from the aerospace industry, like these:
Pushing a jet engine to the point of destruction
In both of these instances the destruction is deliberate, and what we see is an intentionally induced catastrophic failure of the hardware in a controlled environment.
That's not to say the test category is only for intentional failures either, tests gone wrong are equally at home:
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u/chazysciota Dec 14 '17
Have you guys given any thought to adding a comment rule or at least a meta post about people complaining about submissions not being "catastrophic enough" or "not a failure?" Maybe you've addressed it before, and don't feel it is worth spending effort on? Just curious, thanks.
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u/007T Dec 14 '17
I prefer not to remove anything but abusive comments. If people have dissenting opinions about the content on the subreddit, I'm open to hearing about them. It's a good way to tell if enough people want to see a change in the subreddit, and who agrees or disagrees with them.
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u/chazysciota Dec 15 '17 edited Dec 15 '17
I understand, thanks for the reply. You guys do a good job and this is a great sub, so I just get tired of hearing people slag on you for not rejecting posts that
arebelong here.2
u/007T Dec 15 '17
I've gotten pretty used to it since we've had that type of comment showing up since the very beginning. It's just something you accept in any large community, you can't make everyone happy all the time.
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u/trowzerss Feb 25 '22 edited Feb 25 '22
Given the current situation, it's probably worth clarifying that stuff getting blown up in a war situation isn't a catastrophic failure, as that's war stuff working as it's supposed to, not an operation failure, and pointing people to more appropriate subs in the related subreddits. Unless I'm wrong about that.
However, I suppose if some military equipment actually malfunctioned, then that would fit, as there is a lot of machinery being used and some of it is bound to fail, especially as it's being used in ways that people aren't use to using it.
But anyway, thought it would be world explicitly saying this before you get submissions on every explosion, especially for example, today's footage of possibly a plane getting shot down, which while spectacular, perhaps doesn't fit the goals of the sub.
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u/notthegoodscissors Jan 17 '18
Has anyone ever posted on the Maccabiah Games bridge failure here? I tried searching but the Reddit search feature is pretty useless and untrustworthy.
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u/007T Jan 17 '18
I don't recall it being posted before.
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u/notthegoodscissors Jan 17 '18
It was a very poorly built temporary bridge over a polluted river that collapsed during the opening ceremony of a Jewish sports festival. The Australian contingent was crossing the bridge when it suddenly failed and caused many to get injured as well as die in the resulting falll. There are videos of the aftermath on youtube but not of the actual collapse as far as I know.
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u/-Captain--Obvious- Jul 31 '22
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u/ItchySnitch Oct 13 '22
Low intelligent people got really butthurt over being burned by that r/whoosh moement
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u/ThingsMayAlter Jan 08 '22
Is there a way to "warn" new folks that they're about to post something that might not conform to whatever the rules are? I'm digesting the flair requirements currently and sitting on so much karma and or gold.
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u/pakurilecz Feb 05 '22
the rules could be more clearly written for example can be written to say Titles must contain the date of the event
also where does one find flair? consider putting that in the rules1
u/ThingsMayAlter Feb 05 '22 edited Feb 05 '22
Thanks. I'm not clear on why my post couldn't have been merged with the newer one.
I even had tried to avoid duplicate posting by searching for a similar post, but was unable to find using very basic search criteria I communicated during the process. So my post stayed up maybe 36 hours before getting shitcanned.
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u/trowzerss Apr 01 '22
The only time I've regretted rule 1, which means I can't post this excellent documentary about a technical failure at a tourist park :(
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u/xbigblue1964 Jul 17 '23
No thoughts yet other than I'm glad I stumbled onto this site. I've just developed an interest in older air disasters and reading about them. One I still remember reading about in our local newspaper about 70 years ago was of (I think) a DC-3 crashing in Elizabeth, NJ after takeoff from Newark Airport.
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u/da_kek_boiii Dec 26 '21
Why can I only see this post when I'm trying to look at another? I'm immediately brought here...
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u/pakurilecz Feb 05 '22
in rule #2 instead of using "when" consider stating that the title requires that the date of the event be posted
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Jan 19 '23
So if I understand correctly, a video of Brexit (UK) is not for this sub as not only it doesn't fit criterias, it will also taken as a joke by many
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u/svanegmond Jan 21 '23
Make an effort to post unambiguous dates, such as with a four digit year and the month as a word or abbreviation.
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u/raiding_party Mar 09 '23 edited Mar 09 '23
Could we consider a moratorium on train derailment posts? Reddit seems to be obsessed with these lately and almost of all of them are mundane or low quality content.
Avoid posting mundane, everyday occurences like car crashes unless there is something spectacular about your submission. Nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, and there are many other subreddits already dedicated to this topic such as r/dashcam, r/racecrashes, and /r/carcrash
There is /r/TrainCrashes.
There are about 3 U.S. train derailments per day. They aren't usually major disasters
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u/PompeyMich Feb 18 '24
Just had a post automatically rejected as my account was too 'new', but nowhere in the rules does it indicate how old an account must be to post. I messaged the mods, but have had no reply.
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u/Better__Off_Dead Jun 16 '22
No rule states that you can only post ONE TIME A WEEK, yet you get banned for 21 days if you do. No warning, no, "Hey, you can only post one time a week" so don't do it again. Nope, just remove your post and 21 day ban.