Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Dinosaur IC version

Main

Current

Reviewed

Archive

Guidelines

FAQ

Committee

RotM

Uncyclopedia:Imperial Colonization/project

The latest colonization. That's right, we've taken on a mammoth colon.
Nominally Humane! some time Wednesday, 11:44, Dec 15 2010 UTC

I have begun on this, hopefully I'll have finished by tomorrow night. --Black Flamingo 19:30, December 28, 2010 (UTC)

Humour:	7	I really like what you guys have achieved here. However, there are one or two things in both the humour and prose that I think you could do with taking another look at. Ok, so starting from the top; I wasn't really a fan of the opening quotes. As I'm sure you're all aware, Captain Obvious and Captain Oblivious are really tired jokes. In fact, I'm not sure they were even funny to begin with. I personally don't like opening quotes at all, so maybe I'm being a bit harsh, but I don't see how they're encyclopaedic. To me, they just look unprofessional, and tend to be little more than a cheap and lazy way of getting a joke in. The Jurassic Park one is marginally better but in my opinion the article would look better if you deleted them all. The quotes aside, I actually really like the intro as a whole, it really sets the scene well and is humorous. But there was one more little joke in there that kept niggling at me. It was the one about the Hitchcock documentary. I think the issue with it was that it pushes the subject too far into the realms of fantasy. I can suspend my disbelief enough to accept the idea of dinosaurs being alive today, but anything too silly kind of puts my brain into scepticism-overload. To sustain the far-fetched concept, you should probably try to stay as close to life with everything else, and thus lose a few of the more random gags. I had a similar issue with other parts of the article; and I have various suggestions on how to tackle this. The Theme Parks section is one such example, where the idea of dinosaurs playing golf, riding bumper cars and "offering themselves up to be trained" was a mental image that I just found difficult to believe. On the other hand, I really liked the idea of them chasing families down the log flume, because this is more in line with expected dinosaur behaviour. What I would suggest in situations like this is don't go nuts; it's like one extra level of randomness that my brain just can't accept. Instead, have a think about what other things a dinosaur might do in that situation. Things we would expect. At times, I also think the article could benefit from a little brevity, so this could be another cure for the sillier parts. In the PETA section for instance, there are some really good ideas, but then the jokes about the naked run and the "bring a dino to work day" suffer from the same problem I discuss in the above paragraph. In my opinion, the best thing to do here would be to simply cut these sections. I realise this can be hard, but it's nothing to worry about really. I find that most large collaborations like this tend to need some gentle trimming. There's another part that's a bit too silly a little further down as well; the one about them working in sales, I think you could probably rework this. Now, I like the comparisons between dinosaurs and homosexuals, but to make it sound a little more realistic, you should probably start off by talking about them slowly being accepted into society, and then go on to explain that "the only job they ever excelled in was sales", for the same reasons you discuss in the article, of course. I think this way you're not making such a big deal about them working in sales, and as a result it would seem more plausible. Finally for humour, I just have something to say about one of your footnotes; it's the one in the Breeding section. The footnote is really funny, and in fact is the punchline of the whole joke - so don't put it down there where no one's going to read it. Footnotes are only really for jokes that would otherwise spoil the flow, not ones like this that is basically the continuation of what you're already saying.
Concept:	8	The concept is rather good; I really like the idea of dinosaurs still being around today, so well done there. My only issue here, and it's a relatively small one, is that you don't really talk much about dinosaur history, save for a brief paragraph or so. This just seems a little odd given that in reality dinosaurs only existed in distant history. In my opinion the article would feel a lot more complete if you could just make a few more references to their past, like you do with the joke about them just about surviving the asteroid. I'm not saying you should rationalise the concept or anything, because that would probably ruin it, but how about a few nods to other near-extinction events like ice ages and such? Whatever the case it's definitely something you should think about, just to get some more grounding to the idea if nothing else.
Prose and formatting:	5	There are a couple of problems with prose, probably because this was written by so many different people. I'll take you through a few of the awkward sentences now. Habitat & Diet "in which to stop slowly in" - this seems an odd wording here, and I'm not 100% sure what you mean by it. Try to clear it up. " This has led them to suddenly run out of the forest and look around, which has led to the increased urbanisation of dinosaurs" - there are too many references to being "led". Again re-word this too as it's a little awkward. Dinosaurs Among Us "brought into our cities, towns and homes for chil... *ahem* Dino labor or companionship, but mostly dino labor." - I'll be honest, I wasn't sure what you meant by this. Dino labour I understand, like the way they used to mix cement in a pelican in the Flintstones, right? But why are they brought into homes for children? "flesh-devouring" is also a confusing phrase, I thought you were talking about a virus the first time around. "owners hand" - this needs an apostrophe. "that nights meal" - also needs and apostrophe. Breeding "This has non-impoverished breeders turning to reptillion to create the latest living fashion accessories, for celebrities such as actress Sandra Bullock" - this is all very awkward, took a couple of reads before I understood it. I think there's too much going on in one sentence. You need to state clearly what's actually happening here. You also spell "reptilian" wrong. Popular Culture "Dino's" doesn't need an apostrophe because it's a plural. If you find it awkward to pluralise "dino", just say "dinosaurs" instead. Another major problem here is with the formatting. All the way down the article there are enormous white spaces that make it look a bit ugly. It starts at the top with the table of contents, which mucks everything up in the first couple of sections. Is there a reason this isn't on the left as usual? Moving the main image higher would probably help here too, as there's a massive white gap before that even. The gaps continue through the Dinosaurs Among Us, Hunting and PETA sections too. Try to rearrange the images so this doesn't happen, alternate between left and right ones so they don't stack like this. Finally, at the bottom of the Theme Parks section there's a big weird dotted line thing. I don't know why it's there, but make it go away.
Images:	6	I liked pretty much all the images, and even the ones that weren't inherently funny had some great captions. If you had to get rid of one (and you probably should in order to free up some space) then please make it the Menagerie breeding farm one. The image isn't funny and the caption doesn't even seem to have a joke in it. It just doesn't add anything, in fact it probably detracts from the article as a whole. It might also be worth getting rid of the one where the dinosaur has lightsabres or whatever they are, not because it's crap, but because it isn't that great. Brevity is important for images too, although a lot of people don't seem to realise this.
Miscellaneous:	7	My gut feeling as to the whole piece.
Final Score:	33	So to sum up, this is a really good article. To make it great however, you will really have to sort out some of the more nonsensical parts, because as I've said it clashes with the surreal concept. It would also help this if you could include some more stuff about genuine dinosaur history, but that's not a major problem if you can't come up with anything funny. You should also try to tidy up some of the awkward prose I discuss above, and give it a thorough proofread to iron out those last few spelling/grammar errors. And finally, do something about all those massive white spaces in between the sections, and you should have it in much better shape in no time. If there's anything I've said here that you want me to explain better, or if you want my opinion on anything I might have missed, please let me know and I'll try to help. I hope the review is ok.
Reviewer:	--Black Flamingo 19:04, December 29, 2010 (UTC)