Talk:Neoteny

From Pee Review

Can an article about a scientific concept be good?. Is the central joke funny? How about the image, or the writing?--Nydas 17:11, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Humour:	5	Enjoyed the beginning with those interuptions, neoteny must be pretty boring. Did a wiki search and this seems like a fairly intricate concept of biology. You'll probably just get a facitious homer-reaction from most of the users here, "the all ighty ollar... ohh, ha ha, i get it!"
Concept:	8	Science is always good, and if people don't understand it, they automatically think it's funnier. Good idea incorporating the whole human juvenile ordeal.
Prose and formatting:	6	Good formatting but you shift from 1st person to 3rd too often. It works in the intro paragraph but not later on.
Images:	6	That fish has a symbol on it's head that reminds me of the last aeon flux episode... and Slayer... Considering the length of this article, I suppose 'a' image is good enough.
Miscellaneous:	0
Final Score:	25	You have the opportunity to talk about Gary Coleman, I suggest you take advantage
Reviewer:	--AmericanBastard 08:39, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Humour:	7	I like the way you took this one, even though I didn't know the subject, and had little interest going in, I was surprisingly amused by the way you pulled it off.
Concept:	5	I think you poured every ounce of humor you could into this one, but the fact it's about something almost no one gets definitely works against you in this case. People generally laugh at things they understand. That having been said, again, I think you used the "science teacher" angle very well here.
Prose and formatting:	5	Starts strong but gets very listy near the end. Also, I was left going "huh?" as I think I wasn't getting some of the jokes down there.
Images:	8	Good image. It matches the article and produces a laugh on its own.
Miscellaneous:	7	I think you took this article about as far as it can go at the beginning. You may need to lean on that joke more in the article. This is a really tough subject, so kudos on coming up with a way to make this funny.
Final Score:	32	This article is definitely good enough to stay at Uncyclopedia. I'm not sure if it's ready for VFH yet, though. If you can catch a little more of the magic from the top, or even find another great joke that pull the casual audience through to the end, you might be looking at a QFH or even a feature. Good article overall.
Reviewer:	--<<>> 01:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I suppose the way forward now would be to think of a way to fatten out the end of the article, which, as Brad says is very listy. I'll chuck some more images onto there as well, Gary Coleman is indeed a good suggestion.--Nydas 09:54, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

"Can an article about a scientific concept be good?" Yes! It seems to me that the article to hand has four distinct parts:

• 1. A teacher trying to instruct a class of highschool-age humans. The highschool-age humans demonstrate borderline neoteny: they are immature but they are physically able to reproduce. (This is a real headache, especially to the parents of the females.)

• 2. A section on that notoriously neotenous interweb being, the N00b. This section could apply to neotenous human gamers; or it could be generalized to include n00b behavior on interweb forums, blogs, and, er, Wikis...and the potential for Uncyc self-parody rears its lovely head.

• 3. A section written by a neotenous human being about neoteny. This kind of thing can be very funny if you put in intentional screamers -- not just mistakes but jokes masquerading as mistakes.

• 4. A list of childish babble.

I recommend you clarify this structure in your mind. Each of these sections is funny in its own way: how do they fit together? 'Tis a puzzlement! But it's a puzzle worth working on. There is a lot of potential here.

<Commence Whoring>I've experimented with articles supposedly written by idiots -- somewhat in the spirit of your third section. This is a quote from the article on the Harridans, whom the idiot narrator has confused with the Puritans:

In 1623 some more people sailed to the New World to become colons. They came on Anne and Little James. History does not tell us how Anne and James liked that, but it almost doubled the Harridans' size. William Bradford was an especially big man among the Harridans. Maybe he quadrupled in size. But history does not tell us that either.

Miles Standish was a famous Harridan who stood for things. He had seven children and got courted when Priscilla married John Alden instead. Arthur Miller wrote The Courtship of Miles Standish to get him off the charge. It was a good thing for Standish that the Harridans did not believe in prosecution.

However, many of the important Harridan men had lots of children. History tells us they labored hard. William Bradford had four children, and when his third child came out he shouted "Mercy!" so that was her name. When his next one came out he shouted "Oh shit!" but they named the baby Joseph instead.

Bradford started out as a weaver in Amsterdam, and after coming to Plymouth he kept on weaving and took up ducking as well. His wives got hold of him anyways.

I found this style hard to write because although I am an idiot I am not enough of an idiot to write stuff this stupid naturally. But I'd like to see other people experimenting with intentional idiocy. Then I would not be a lone idiot. ----OEJ 23:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I think Harridans would be more idiotic if there were fewer grown-up words and phrases. Generally, anything with more than two syllables should be considered suspect. I see 'quadrupled' and 'struggled' there.--Nydas 15:59, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Spelling and content questions

1. Are the spelling errors in the "Neoteny in humans" section an intentional example of behavioral neoteny?
2. What can we say about how neoteny is related to cuteness? If you are not clear on why I am asking this, see information on Wikipedia (relating to humans). --Pentium5dot1 (semi-retired) t~^_^~c 06:07, 2 March 2009 (UTC)