Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Clare G.A.A.
Clare GAA[edit source]
Seányg 22:03, March 18, 2010 (UTC)
Please criticize constructively
- I'll do this since it's been here so long. ~
02:33, Apr 2, 2010
| Humour: | 6.5 | General Comments
I think this would be pretty funny to someone already familiar with Clare GAA, but I'm not from Clare or anywhere near Ireland, so it was hard for me to understand this article. Ideally, a good article should be accessible to people not familiar with the subject, with more detailed stuff thrown in for insiders. You have very good prose and tone, and some parts made me smile, but I had to read 3 Wikipedia articles just to get what you're talking about. This accessibility is a major area that you can improve on. My general advise towards obscure references is to reduce, explain or superimpose them on a preconceived notion that people have so that people connect the dots more easily (ie, using stereotypes). I think the most effective for you would be to explain, as I've noticed that you launch into the jokes right at the beginning. It would be so much better if you would just spend a sentence explaining what you're talking about, before launching into the jokes. Lead-in. This lead-in is crucial, especially in articles such as yours, because it determines if people are gonna continue reading an article about a subject that they've never heard of. I think your intro is not very good, and to an extent it ruins the rest of the article. This is because you did not explain what Clare GAA is right at the start, and I had to figure it out as I went along (not to mention look it up on Wikipedia), which ruined my enjoyment of the jokes in the rest of the article. I think that even just mentioning something like: "Clare GAA is the Clare County Board of Gaelic Athletics Association. It is responsible for the sports of hurling and Gaelic football in county Clare. It is the pinnacle of sporting activities etc...". While my addition wasn't funny, it greatly helps the article's readability so the reader doesn't have to figure out what you're talking about as he goes along. It is also not that good to make the lead-in too funny, because this is were you're supposed to play the straight man, and the funniest bits are supposed to be near the end. I also didn't understand, and Wikipedia didn't explain this, but is Clare GAA the administrative board for hurling in Clare, or is it the sports team for hurling in Clare, or is it an administrative board that fields a sports team? You have to understand that in the civilised world, the administrative boards of a sport and the sports teams are usually separate. Besides this, your intro was also extremely hard for me to get into even after I understood what Clare GAA is, because it had too much information and too many jokes. Have a look at our featured articles and count how many jokes they have in the intro. It's usually not more than 3. I think in the lead you need more "padding", as in, not funny parts that explain the subject, as I said, to play the straight man, because playing the straight man makes the funny parts funnier. I suggest you take a long, hard look at your lead, and trim it down while adding explanations, and maybe move most of the jokes to the body of the article under their relevant sections. Biddy Early's Curse It seems extremely weird to start the "history of Clare GAA" with Biddy Early's Curse, because it made it seem like Clare GAA was irrelevant or non-existent before being cursed. As usual, explanations, explanations, explanations. For instance: "Shortly after the formation of Clare GAA the organisation was cursed by the local witch, Biddy Early, for some unknown reason. This is why our fine sporting talents have not been able to achieve their expected potential of winning all the All Irelands possible until after 1994." or some such thing. Another thing is, you used "our" here, but in some places you refer to Clare as "them", which is it? Have to be consistent. Also, who are the Tipperarey people and why was Biddy Early helping them, especially since you said Biddy Early was a Clare native? In terms of humour, I think it would be funnier if you say something like: "Biddy Early was a local healer-witch who died in the 1800's, but still managed to put a curse on Clare GAA after her death, before Clare GAA was even formed.", instead of saying that she's a bitch and a hoor (whore?). Clare's 1995 All Ireland success Didn't realise that "the Banner" meant Clare GAA, this is something I would suggest you address in your lead-in. I also have another complaint that you used too many quotation marks. Some are needed for player's nicknames and quotes, but some you just put them in the middle of sentences to, sort of, mark a change in vocabulary and writing style? I didn't find "to "lay the Smackdown" on Offaly's "candy asses"" funny, anyway, and I think this and other jokes in this style are stuff that you could do without. In this section you also drop too many irrelevant names without bothering to explain who they are, or show how they tie in with the main concept of your article. It's the obscure references thing again, which you really need to watch out for, and possibly trim them down. Clare U21 All Ireland success "This was apparently only Clare's first All Ireland success at this age group but of course the national records of the championships from 2007 and before this are unavailable so we can only assume that Clare have won numerous titles." - nice. I like jokes of this type the most, more please. But "Resulting in the services having to change to "Plan B" as they celebrated" - what services? Also I think for your article to achieve a level closer to featured articles you should get rid of the profanities, as they are rarely funny after the first time. The second paragraph also, I felt, suffered from the "too much information" thing. In four lines you attempted to explain: John Conlon's contribution to the victory, his father's criminal activities with Ollie Baker (who, by the way, haven't been introduced yet so I don't know who he is), the punishment for those criminal activities and Ollie Baker's bribery of the judge. So my suggestion to you is: slow down! You attempt to take on too many things too fast, and this is bad, especially when your subject is not something most people would know about. Ollie Baker As Ger Loughnane put it "He liked his vegetables" - I like this for some reason. "Despite the criticism Ollie decided not to give up, but then he did." - also like this. I think this is one of your better sections, as it deals mainly with one thing - Ollie Baker's entrepreneurship, although it does have it's moments where it gets a little bit confusing. But anyway, another suggestion I have for you to make the rest of your article also less confusing is to try an limit what you talk about to one or two things per section. Another thing is to have a clear concept, and make most of your jokes related to this concept. This is called having a main joke or a running joke, which I will address in "concept". It's also weird to me that Ollie Baker is a subsection of history. To me, Ollie Baker and Brian Lohan should be under a seperate heading, like "Notable Clare players" or something. Also, it would be good if you mention hurling in some of the previous subheadings, for instance instead of "history", replace it with "Hurling in Clare". Brian Lohan "trying to conceal the cocaine in large see through plastic bags" - like this. "It is unknown how many scores Brian actually got for Clare but we believe its in the region of 4 points" - also like this. Just clicked onto his Wikipedia article and saw how much it glorified him. Something to think about there. I'm not sure about the post-playing career bit though, because I felt it was more of an extension of Ollie Baker than it is about Brian Lohan himself. Brian Lohan must be who you're referring to when you said, "final inclusion of gingers now after much protesting from the sub species on the condition that they always wear a helmet even after matches being interviewed. I think this section, and the whole article too, can be improved when you've got a clear concept. Gaelic Football in Clare I thought this bit was funny, as gaelic football is nothing but a footnote in an article that's supposed to be about both hurling and gaelic football. |
| Concept: | 6 | As you can see, my favourite jokes in your article are your more subtle ones. I felt that you have some form of concept, but you weren't really clear what it was, or rather, you didn't make it clear. That glorification of Clare GAA is certainly a good concept which is not that developed, in fact, I liked it best when you subtlely contradict yourself after saying how good Clare was. However in a lot of parts of the article you got distracted by various things. Some of these things may be needed to be funny to people who are familiar with Clare GAA, but at the same time they serve to alienate the people who are not. My suggestion to you is to look at which ones you want to keep, and get rid of the rest. Also, streamline the jokes so that they relate back to your main concept, whatever you decide it to be. Streamlining your jokes makes everything more coherent and understandable. Anyway, the concept is the most important part of your article, so really think about what it is and apply it. Hope to see further improvements in this article. |
| Prose and formatting: | 4.5 | I saw a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes there. I think I'll go in and correct them for you because I'm too lazy to write it all out here. I'll only be doing the spelling, the obvious grammar mistakes, and the punctuation, feel free to revert me, I'm only doing it in one edit (oops, two cuz I made a mistake). I've also noticed that you have a lot of run-on sentences in need of commas or breaks, and those are very hard to read, some of them which I had to read twice just to get what you're saying. I suggest that you reread the whole article again, many times, to identify these parts and reword them. You also have many, many sentences that are too long, and you should break these up, seriously. Also identify the grammar mistakes that I've missed. Another issue that I want to address is tone consistency. Besides referring to Clare as "we" or "they", you also have these exclamation marks, some of them are even right in the middle! of a sentence. Some sentences sound encyclopedic, but some others, especially the one with the exclamations marks, sound very POV-ish. This also has to do with your concept because it is in your concept that you decide which tone you want to write in. After you've decided your tone, reread your article and reword the parts that did not conform to it. This time, for your article, I would prefer a subtlely biased tone. |
| Images: | 7 | There are a lot of them, which is good. I found them ok, as they mainly illustrate the jokes in your article. They're not actually that funny on their own, though, but it's ok if you can't find anything funnier to replace them. Here I think quantity makes up for quality. I only have one complaint. That picture of the dog is supposed to go with Ollie Baker's section, but is in Brian Lohan's section instead. I can see that you want to avoid squeezing the text in between two images, but then this gives you the problem I just mentioned. So I think you should make the dog image slightly lower than the Ollie Baker hounding a Kilkenny player image, but still make it correspond to Ollie Baker's section. |
| Miscellaneous: | 7 | Overall impression is a 7. I still want to say, good job. This article has greatly improved since I last saw it on PEE, when I couldn't read past the first paragraph due to extreme confusion. There's still room for improvement, so keep up the good work. |
| Final Score: | 31 | If you need further help, contact me on my talk page. |
| Reviewer: | ~    08:16, Apr 2, 2010
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