Talk:Fat Americans

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From Pee Review

Humour:	8	Well as you know, I'm rather fond of the original. For me much of it's appeal was in the fact that it was short and sweet, and written in a rather amusing style. Quite how intentional that was on the part of the original author we may never know! It was a masterpiece whatever. I also liked the grammer used. There was one huge sentence in the middle which just kept going that really tickled me... Now obviously you had to expand this out a lot, which you have, but I think the most important aspect of the origional was that it was written in a consistant style. For me, there are a few places in your (improved) version where it is not quite obvious as to where "here" and "there" are. I think the point of the origional was that it was from the perspective of a Brit. I think you have some places now where you Americanism actually shows through a little. I fixed some of them, but you started editing em, so obviously you don't quite agree. That's cool, but I think you need to decide exactly who wrote this, and where they are when they wrote it. You talk about "here" a few times... Don't forget the author is back in the UK now... I really like the beginning of the original myself. The "OK, I know some..." bit. For me that really was the most important part of it, as it sets the tone for the rest of the article. I changed your version to the original, buy ya changed it back. Also fair enough tis your article now AE, but for me it was better how it was. I'm really not sure about the seminar thing. You only mention it at the start, and then it's really just a few sections which don't follow as being part of a seminar. If you really want to keep this as a seminar, I think you need to make a few changes elsewhere to make it compatible. The bit about "we went there on holiday..." does not really work if this was a seminar. Why would the guy be telling people about his holiday? Surely in this case the article would be much more formal? Whatever you do. You need to decide one way or the other, and stick to it. Currently it's a bit of a mix of two different styles and it's just not quite right.
Concept:	8	Well, I'm kinda trying to change your mind on the concept a little, but regardless, either way is a good dig at obesity and American Politics. Have you read the wiki link which your article points to? I think you might find some new ideas for sections from that. There is a wiki on FAT also I think. Maybe use these as a source if you are running short of ideas.
Prose and formatting:	7.5	The prose is VERY important to this article. It really has to flow very well. There were a few paces which were a little out of character with the rest of the article which I changed, but I guess it depends on if you go with the seminar thing or just have it as someone talking. Either way, make sure it's consistent. I think you should consider reading the original a few more times to try to figure out exactly what it was about it that made you laugh. When you are sure that you know, have a good think about whether this humour is still present in your article now... You're in danger of loosing it I think.
Images:	6.5	Not the greatest. We have all seen the kid eating the burger lots of times before, and its getting lame now. I think you have a image request in, so we can see how that turns out. Again, it's hard to suggest new pics as it depends on what you do with the overall concept. Surely a picture of a Fat American is required? I'm not sure...
Miscellaneous:	7.5	{{Pee|8|8|7.5|6.5}}
Final Score:	37.5	This is a great effort AE. It's awesome that you are using the humour from QVFD article as the basis for what can be a really great article. It's not finished yet though. I think you need to decide on your writing style, consider exactly who wrote this article, what their views were, and what kinda thing they might have said. Currently you are caught slightly between two styles. Probably your normal one, and that of the original author. Make a decision and stick with it. Oh, the article also probably needs the {{Brittish}} tag adding to it. You might actually find a few less than happy Americans doing some minor re-writes for ya if you're not careful! Good work though. It's looking good. So far...
Reviewer:	MrN 17:03, Jan 20

Humour:	8	Nice work. The "Seminar" approach was interesting, it wouldn't work for some topics, but I think it turned out rather nicely here. I'd say that the first three sections are the strongest, particularly the guy who had four heart attacks in the line at the doctor's office. That part was awesome! I think you should expand on that and maybe carry some humor like that over into the "Who is responsible for Fat Americans?" section, which I thought was by far the weakest. I think, though the informal prose worked for most of the sections, this section lends itself to a more textbook-ish prose, something like this: "The rapid increase in the number of fat Americans can most certainly be blamed on the United States government, and the country's health care system (where it is very common for McDonald's to make deliveries of burgers to heart attack patients even when they are on their death beds, or undergoing surgery). The government has the power to send them all to an island with a huge McDonald's on it, but they haven't as of yet (although they did try in 1999, but the boat sunk after eight seconds of being under the combined weight of a thousand fat Americans)." That's just a suggestion, but I think it would work. As for the other sections,
Concept:	8.5	Good, solid concept. I like the idea of viewing the fat Americans from an outside perspective, and warning of the possibility of them expanding beyond the United States borders to "conquer the world." Try to enfuse more absurd humor, like the guy having four heart attacks in five minutes. Obesity in the United States is just begging to be hilariously exaggerated. I provided a few little ideas when I edited it, but I'll leave you to work your magic with the rest of it :).
Prose and formatting:	7	This works fairly well, but as I said, perhaps an alteration of the "Who is responsible for Fat Americans?" section is in order. Also, a few parts have typos or are grammatically awkward, but that's not a big deal. I fixed one of the typos. I remember seeing another one when I read through it, but I'm looking at it again and I can't seem to find it. Dammit! Oh well, just a quick proofread and most of that stuff will be fixed up.
Images:	7	Good use of pictures in the context of the articles, though the captions were one of the weaker points of the article, comedy-wise. The caption of the Dubya picture is okay, but I think the caption of the pic with the two fat kids could be funnier. Like, maybe "After finishing his big-mac, young Pugsly promptly ate the boy next to him." Or something.
Miscellaneous:	7.6	Averaged.
Final Score:	38.1	Nice work. Work at it a little more, and it could be even better. I hope this was helpful, and I'm sorry it took me so long to get around to writing it! :)
Reviewer:	--THE 21:27, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

This article is under review by <font-weight:bold>Gerry Cheevers. Sayeth Gerry: shotgun!!

Humour:	6.5	average of sections intro:7 not hilarious, but defines where you're going. maybe one joke dropped in would be good, like a 'hey, put DOWN the cheeseburger' in the middle of a sentence. what are...:7 a solid section, albeit only 2 sentences long. those 2 are really great, but this part needs to be expanded into at least a full paragraph. try naming some examples of fat americans, like rosie odonnell, john goodman, and those fat biker twins. i think something like 'their diet consists of:' followed by a ridiculously long list that escalates in absurdity (burgers, fries...chocolate, cakes...cardboard, drywall) would work nicely. why should i care?:7 this one is hit or miss. the door and meteor part are great, but the other ones are slightly dull. try changing fart to release byproducts of turning food into chemical energy to keep with the professional tone of a seminar. who is responsible:7 again, some good ideas, and some that could be better. you seem to reference mcdonalds a ton, try changing it up to other fast food places sometimes. the boat idea works great, and the george bush part isnt as played-out and tired as i thought it would be. the solution:5 the end gets ranty and harks back to bush, but it starts nicely. the fat person-suicicde thing is good, but the rest of that paragraph is a little...not funny. maybe suggest ways for non-fat americans to help out, such as stealing fat americans' cars, forcing them to walk to the bus stop, etc.
Concept:	8.5	i like the concept, it's well executed. my concern is: it doesn't feel like a mainspace article. maybe a move to 'Why:Are Americans Fat' or 'HowTo:Deal with Fat Americans' would serve well, or even to 'Seminar Series:Fat America'. or maybe it does work well enough as 'fat americans', you should really just ask a few people and see what the collective opinion is.
Prose and formatting:	9	no problems. your list-ish sections are detailed enough to be considered not-lists. minus one point for having all images right aligned (i like image staggering, its my favorite.)
Images:	8.333	pugsly:10 this seems like a necessary picture, and the caption made me chuckle. kudos. dubya:6.5 slightly less than adequate, this one just doesn't hit the funny for me. maybe a caption with a statistic about how the economy is in a depression due to the added weight of americans since bush took office? shadow:8.5 i see this is an under user work. excellent use of image request, with fitting caption.
Miscellaneous:	9	i award nine miscellany points, for this being your ninth article, and also reflecting a great improvement in your writing since you have joined the site. congratulations!
Final Score:	41.333	i see the influences of the great cajek in your work. i am encouraged by the goodness and general goodality of this article. using the preview button, i see my/your final score is a robust 41.333, placing your article in the 'more than adequate, might be VFH' section. i feel like with some extension in general and also making refinements based on those voting 'abstain' or 'against', you'll be ready to give VFH another go my early march (i wouldnt re-nom before then, as VFH voters have ridiculous memories and tend to vote down re-noms that spring up too soon. i say this based on personal experience). in any case, i look forward to helping with this article in any further way i can (i can give it a once-over if you so desire), and i implore you to use my talk page at your leisure. keep up the good work!
Reviewer:	--SirGerrycheeversGunTalk 22:37, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Humour:	4	See Concept. Yeah, a lot of the jokes are clichéd too, such as describing them as you would a separate species. Their natural habitat, etc. I felt like I was reading some automatically generated article, rather than a funny one.
Concept:	3	Okay, this joke is seriously getting a bit stale. It's be like basing an article entirely off of the joke that Brits have bad teeth. Also, statistically Brits are just as obese as Americans. Seriously, look it up. So I'm not sure why Americans are the specific target of fat jokes. IMHO, you should target America's false sense of entitlement rather than their size.
Prose and formatting:	8	No problem really, the style was good. And there weren't any major errors that I could ascertain.
Images:	7	The Images could use some improvement, but are generally good. The quality of the Venn-diagram could be improved. Get rid of the aliasing, and make the text warp to fit better in the middle.
Miscellaneous:	5.6	N/A
Final Score:	27.6	Yes, I'm an American. I am quite skinny. I may be biased. But fat jokes in general are not that funny anymore save the ones that are very subtle.
Reviewer:	Kaizer the Bjorn takkun (nya nya) (1961 model!) Check out T61! 23:53, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, before you go reverting this review, AE, and asking for a more in-depth one, consider this: what he says here chimes with what people said on the VFH vote - so obviously, it has some relevance. I think the problem you face here is how the article is perceived - more than one article has failed recently because people felt it to be "too ranty". The fact that the rant was supposed to be sending up the ranter more than the subject of the rant was missed, for whatever reason, so the approach needs to be re-thought some more.

I'd suggest playing up a little more the stupidity of your narrator - make it obvious he's cartoon-biased. Acknowledge the point above about there being fat blighters elsewhere by having him deny that this is so - a fat person in another country is an American on holiday, dammit! And shift around the intro, making it clear that this is a non-biased seminar, aimed at discussing, fairly, the topic of Fat Americans. Explain that you'll be covering both sides of the debate - how fat they are, and why they are fat. Yes, I know other people claim that this problem is not exclusive to America - but they're American - they would say that!

Dismiss other stereotypes - particularly the Brit/bad teeth one - out of hand, while claiming that the Fat American is the ONE TRUE stereotype. and so forth. Leaven your rant with moments that show up just how much of a prat your narrator is. As vain as it may be to bring one of my own articles in to this, Down with this sort of thing! does something along those lines - undermining the seriousness of the narrator with his own impotence, in that case.

Think about changing your approach a little here - if people think it's too ranty, you need to do more to leaven the rant, and throw it into relief. So take the comments in the review above, along with mine here, and have another go at it. It may help it to run better on VFH if you do, as it was such a stumbling block for you last time. --SirU.U.Esq. VFH | GUN | Natter | Uh oh | Pee 11:29, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Brits have bad teeth? /me smiles nicely MrN 12:33, Feb 12

Israelis are violent? /me tucks away the shotgun Brigadier Sir Mordillo GUN UotY WotM FP UotM AotM MI³ AnotM VFH +S 12:35, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I wonder if it's worth mentioning the origional. Maybe put the text in quotes somewhere (modified slightly perhaps) as a reference to make sure people get "the joke". Looks like to me, this article is more funny if you know about the original. It's almost retrospective like. MrN 12:41, Feb 12

Proofreading

This page was listed for proofreading, I see a bit of work has been done on it, is it completed or would more proofreading on this article be useful?

Please either add {{Proofread}} to the article or move it from New Articles down to Completed Articles.

You can then also slap {{BeenProofread}} here on the talk page!

Thanks! ~ Dame Ceridwyn ~ talk DUN VoNSE arc2.0 07:24, 31 January 2008