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Baltimore Orioles

Globaltourniquet - (was TPLN) 06:50, October 28, 2009 (UTC)

Humour:	5	(For starters, please don't give too much weight to my number grades.) Foremost, there is too much you in the article. The very first paragraph is the author's rationale for writing the article, and the first person is used more often than just when it's the most clever phrasing. Humor really wanes in the first section, though that's necessary to set the stage. If you ever have to explain a joke to the reader, it's not done yet! A play on someone's name is problematic, but if you're going to do so, maintain it to the end of the article. In a couple cases (Google, SI), you've found something that's naturally funny, tried to make it funnier, then found yourself explaining that the original was plenty funny--that's too complicated.
Concept:	9	Orioles and gallows humor, what a combination! The article will resonate with Orioles fans and has appeal to this fan of a certain divisional rival.
Prose and formatting:	8	Keep working on the prose, on ways to assemble facts that will induce the reader to adopt a certain conclusion, rather than drag him to it by the nose, as when "evil" is in a section head. As this article is very fact-based, and espouses an extreme opinion that some fans have in all seriousness, keep moving toward humor through clever phrasings--the career summary in the first paragraph of the "evil" section is great work.
Images:	9	Logo seems to be bigger than necessary. "Chin" caption is excellent. Second Angelos photo needs a good caption. How about a ballpark photo, especially an old one during your overview of history?
Miscellaneous:	8	Consider turning the initial (logo) illustration into one of those boxes with thumbnail fields of information on the team.
Final Score:	39	There is a humor article here. There is also a dead-serious diatribe and personal bill-of-particulars against the owner. I can relate to it because we all have similar issues with the management of our favorite ball club. With a little more work, though, the humor article will win the struggle.
Reviewer:	Spıke ¬  12:26 30-Oct-09

Thanks, Spike. I think I get many of your points. The only thing is, perhaps due to a failing on my part to get them across, a couple of things appear to have been missed. This is an author-character too emotionally involved to keep his feelings out of the encyclopedia article. As part of this, he is subtly apologetic about the "jokes" he can't help but tell, it's him trying to "drag the reader by the nose". My joke here is on him - as you may know, many Orioles fans are way overreactive against Angelos who, yes, is having trouble putting together a winner, and that's an important piece of being an owner, but he's actually a really excellent person in may ways in my view. And I hope that this article can address that, as the author-character does pull back after a while, if only slightly. This is my goal, I think it's something like the Michael Jackson idea, though perhaps not as obvious. Maybe I didn't pull it off, because I had to explain the joke (which may mean I didn't finish it...). But to reduce the author intrusion, and fix "his" emotionally charged irrational inconsistencies, would undermine that goal I think. Thank you. -- GlobalTourniquet: UnAstrologer, UnJournalist, shameless narcissistic America-hating liberal atheist award-winning featured writer 16:27, October 30, 2009 (UTC)

In the last week, I've repeatedly shown inflexibility to understand the voice-doing-the-talking, or been too insistent that articles be written in the neutral "encyclopedic" tone. The recurring problem is that caricature narrators remind me of caricature real people and I can read it as one of them trying to pass off advocacy or ego as humor. Islam used to be written in the voice of a hostile Texas redneck, which produced hate mail from Muslims on the talk page. The pattern had been broken by the time I arrived, and I rewrote it further to be less scathing and more small jabs. Likewise, Barack Obama was written in the voice of one of the black-helicopter people (Obama's leading us toward dictatorship!) but I hear them on the radio every day and they are dead serious. It too had a huge talk page about what the truth is, and likewise I tried to turn the article toward smaller but equally ridiculous points. Here the previous authors say I've broken it and we're discussing where to go next.

So there may or may not be a fundamental problem with the article. I almost want to raise a Forum topic, not because we need policy change or a definitive answer, but just to get more comments from veterans. At any rate, even a mistaken impression may be good input; I hope you'll think about how to make the article's point of view clearer, whether it needs one at all, and hope I've helped you with the smaller points. You aren't the first subject of one of my Pee Reviews who must be told: "You have the right to request a second Pee Review by a different reviewer." Spıke ¬  16:46 30-Oct-09

Oh, I hope I didn't give the wrong impression in my comment. I completely agree that mistaken impressions are often excellent input. There's some recursion irony in those two sentences, isn't there? Anyway, yeah, I think starting that forum topic is a great idea, if just to bounce ideas about this around. This is why I think we did a great job with Michael Jackson, because it's extreme and should be obvious (and is, even to the only mildly perspicacious), and it's as fun as hell to make fun of the morons who think it's an article of great "REVERANCE" [sic]. That one really shows how this "author-character" approach should be done. Film directors is a great example of this conundrum. You can only do so many of them encyclopedically before ti gets old. That's why Guildy's Akira Kurosawa is so absolutely brilliant, the "best" of all of them in some ways. Great author-character approach there, and I don't mean the kids. I mean the self-satisfied narrator who tacitly supports their moronic views without having to spew them himself. So yeah, let's have a discussion about the author-character approach, where it works, where it doesn't, how to do it well, who likes it, who hates it, etc. We will improve this damn wiki if it kills us. -- GlobalTourniquet: UnAstrologer, UnJournalist, shameless narcissistic America-hating liberal atheist award-winning featured writer 16:59, October 30, 2009 (UTC)

I looked at Michael Jackson a while ago, and left it puzzled at whether a groupie was trying to game Uncyclopedia. Wish your article had, in the first paragraph, something like: "To imagine that four decades behind the Baltimore Orioles' microphone would come to this." That would prepare me for a deliberate alternate point of view, an unambiguously fictional one (as a real Company Man would never write it), and an excuse for the author's many references to himself. Spıke ¬  18:58 30-Oct-09

PS--Thanks for the encouragement; the query is now at Forum:Articles written from a controversial voice. Spıke ¬  20:13 30-Oct-09