Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Beige
Beige[edit source]
User:Mrthejazz/sig 14:04, August 8, 2010 (UTC)
- I'll be starting this shortly, and will be done by tomorrow night. --Black Flamingo 17:54, August 10, 2010 (UTC)
| Humour: | 7 | Hi Jazz, my lifelong nemesis, this is a pretty good article you have here. There really aren't many issues, but nevertheless I have a few suggestions that I hope will help.
Generally your humour is really good. The way you make the article boring to the point of irritance is very effective, and also amusing, so good job there. I do have some concern that it might work too well, and that readers may actually find the article quite tiresome. This can probably be fixed quite easily however. One of the main reasons I feel this is because of your list: the really long list of "colours that aren't beige". To sit and read them all is quite a task, let me tell you. I'm pretty sure everyone who sees it will just quickly glance at it, hoping to catch a few funny ones. Could I suggest making it a little shorter? Perhaps getting rid of some of the silly (but not funny) colours like pigment green and venetian red? It's up to you of course, but it really is a very extensive list. Another problem here is that there seems to be an inbalance of funny colours to serious colours, tipped in favour of serious colours. There are two things you could do to counteract this. The first is to somehow highlight the funny colours (maybe not all of them, just the best), so they stand out and readers aren't straining to find them. An interesting way I thought you could do is by linking all the real colours to the pages we (presumably) have on them, leaving the non-real ones as regular text, and thus more noticeable. My second idea is to simply add more funny ones (which, if you also cut some of the serious ones as I suggest, would become a whole lot clearer). You could probably also work on some of the funny ones you already have. A lot of them, for instance, just add swear words to pre-existing colours. This didn't really work more than once. Try to add more context to your made up colours, rather than just swearing. For example, how about something like "James Brown brown" or "McDonalds cheese orange"? Not hilarious I know, but they're the kind of colours people can imagine, and that's exactly what I think you need more of. You already do this to some extent, of course, and some of the colours are hilarious so don't worry about it too much. As for other jokes, the section on the Beige Film seems a bit silly. Perhaps get rid of this, it's kind of seems like you're grabbing desperately for beige things to talk about (perhaps this is the joke, but if so, make it obvious). Otherwise, get rid of this part, because it's not a real film. Or is it? It's certainly not one most people have heard of. I did really like the idea of a beige Power Ranger however, perhaps you could come up with a section about this instead? Something else that puzzled me in your "list of things that are beige or have beige in them" section was the "language, linguistics and sign theory" part. This seemed like the wrong place for it. Also, the title is a bit misleading, you're not talking about "langage, linguistics and sign theory", you're talking about the etymology of the word beige. I recommend moving this to a section of its own, perhaps just called "etymology". Wikipedia tends to put this sort of thing as the first header, but it's up to you where it goes. Overall, your "beige things" section is a bit inconsistent. It starts off with very specific titles, ie. "aeroplane cockpits", "the beige book", then starts using more generic ones like "music" and "film". It would be better if you stuck to one format. I recommend the more specific titles, as I feel that would be a more boring list. This of course would help continue the boring tone. So that about wraps it up for humour. Mostly this article is full of really great jokes. The one about the New Zealand Cricket Team doing "alright" was great. |
| Concept: | 8 | Now like I said, the boring tone works pretty well, but to stop it from being a drag I would really recommend getting some more content in here. If we ignore the enormous lists of colours, what is remaining seems pretty listlike itself. The main body of the text - "things that are beige etc" - needs more depth to counteract the two massive lists either side of it. Your section on ethnography for instace just says "some people are beige". Really? Who? That sounds kind of interesting, please go on. You should also explain the Beige Book a bit more. Is it a real book? If so, it would be funnier if your header read "the Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions", and then mentioned in the prose that it was coloured beige, as this would make it look humorously dull (the beige book, on the other hand, sounds mysterious and mildly interesting).
So yeah, it's all a little brief. Again it's not a major problem, but if you could get a little bit more in there, I'd certainly be happier. Surely there's tons more stuff you could say about beige. Did you know, for example, that the average colour of the universe is actually beige? They call it "cosmic beige" or something to that effect. Tehcnically, this means everything is beige. Surely you could write a section on that? Perhaps along the lines of how the whole of reality is as bland and monotonous as all the other beige things you discuss. The only other thing I had a gripe with conceptually is in your "fashion" section. You say that the beige-ness of khaki pants "is a point of contention". This seems contrary to the rest of the article, which considers beige-ness to be very dull and incident-free. I'm not convinced that this could cause any contention in the world of your article. Maybe it would be funnier if it started a very neutral and boring argument, which actually ends without incident? |
| Prose and formatting: | 8.5 | Ok, spelling and grammar first. You're missing an "are" in the first sentence of "things that are either beige or have beige in them". The line should be: while there are things that are considered common knowledge
Then you go on to say "then there are things that are beige". Perhaps you should stress the "are" in here, so people can really tell these things are beige. This would just make a deliberately awkward sentence a bit easier to read, in my opinion. Ok, you were probably expecting this next one - the beige coloured text does kind of add to the article, and I did like it, but I think it makes it way too hard to read. Perhaps it would be better if you made the background beige? And included more beige pictures to really hammer home the monotony of beige-ness? Seriously, it was near-impossible to read. I had to highlight the text. The really long list of colours in the first image also makes it look a bit scruffy. It's not a huge detriment to the article or anything, but I personally think this kind of joke would work better in the main body of the text. It would counteract the "colours that are not beige" section quite well. The caption was funny though so you should probably keep the rest of it intact, should you make this revision. |
| Images: | 8 | Images. They're good, but the top one should be moved down, maybe replacing the picture of the guy in the huge bowtie as that was probably the worst image. That one didn't really add anything as far as I'm concerned, plus it looked a little too exciting to be consistent. As predictable as it sounds, your top image should probably just be beige - all beige. I like how you put a lot of your opening images on the left, by the way. It's like you have a signature. |
| Miscellaneous: | 7 | Scored by my gut feeling. |
| Final Score: | 38.5 | So to sum up, the main problem here really is briefness. I hope my review helps. Don't take any of my criticisms to heart, this is a great article, my suggestions are just there to help you should you want to change anything. Good luck with this (and with WotM, damn you), and feel free to contact me if you need any clarification or want me to look at any changes. |
| Reviewer: | --Black Flamingo 18:08, August 11, 2010 (UTC) | |