Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Clare GAA

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Clare GAA

Seányg 20:33, February 17, 2010 (UTC) Please critcize constructively. Thank you

I'll take a look at this one tomorrow. --ChiefjusticeDS 21:31, February 21, 2010 (UTC)

Humour:	3	Right, before I get going with this it is important that you understand what the purpose of this review is. It is categorically not to tell you that your writing is worthless and the best thing you can do with it is to blank the page and never come back, the purpose is to help you improve your work and I will do my best to give you all the help I can in this review. OK, the first thing I need to tell you is that fixing this up is going to take a lot of time and effort, the very first thing you need to do is sit down and plan what you are going to write carefully. My reason for saying this is that your narrative is all over the place and it is nearly impossible to get any of your jokes first time. This is quite a common problem for new editors, I know that when you sit down to write an article you get new ideas as you writen and that your first thought is to put them into the text, but I have to emphasise the benefits of careful planning. If you take the time to decide what point you want to get across overall and then think about how you can structure your article to fit this in you will have a theme to talk about in every section. As it is I felt nearly completely lost upon reaching the third line. The most important thing for you when doing your planning is that you read and understand how to be funny and not just stupid, it is an incredibly useful resource for new writers and I cannot recommend it enough to you. I am not saying that your jokes are totally stupid, I'm saying that you have to understand the sort of thing that the uncyclopedia community looks for in articles. Once you understand that you should devote some time to editing down your existing work to fit in your planned structure, I realise that it is difficult to delete work that you have spent large amounts of time and effort on, but one of the hallmarks of a good writer is being able to look at their own work and decide, "Is this good or bad?"; using HTBFANJS go through your work and make cuts and changes. When you are planning try to come up with a good concept for the article, obviously it is going to be based on "Clare GAA" but if you take a look at articles like this one you will notice that authors here come up with all sorts of ideas to make their basic idea funnier. If you are struggling with HTBFANJS or just don't see how you would apply it to your article then I would strongly recommend that you take a look at some of the best articles we have for some excellent ideas and inspiration. With some work you can really turn this around, I'll talk about some of the problems with your existing humour next, so you have an idea of what needs working on. With regard to your existing humour there are a significant number of problems here, very common for new editors, so do not despair that they are there. The first is that your article is somewhat inaccessible, I personally had never heard of "Clare GAA" before taking a look at this article, I read through the Wikipedia article a few times and then the Wikipedia article on hurling but I was still left confused by some aspects of your opening. You have to remember that context is vital in an article on uncyclopedia, wikipedia or any other encyclopaedia, parody or otherwise. If you take a look at our featured articles you will note that all of them begin by stating what they are talking about, the same should apply to you since many people will read this article in the same haze of ignorance as I did. The second point I have about your humour is that you are trying to do too much too quickly, in your preamble for example you make a statement and then you try to make several small jokes about that statement, there is just too much there to take in as a reader. This is a shame because there are actually a couple of good jokes in there, this joke: "The people of Clare's abilities to play the sport are unparalelled in Ireland apart from the other various counties who play the game" was excellent and is the sort of humour you should aim to replicate. My most important piece of advice on this one is that you stick to talking about actual events and people. Being random and making things up is OK at times but when people read your article they either: know about "Clare GAA" already or don't and are trying to work things out as they go along. People who know about "Clare GAA" already will be looking for a humourous slant on the Clare County Board of the Gaelic Athletic Association and will thus most likely want the article to satirise actual events, and those who don't know about the above will just be confused. My recommendation is that you do your best to parody the wikipedia article as much as you can, this will provide you with opportunities for jokes and a ready made structure, it is by far the easiest way to pull this sort of idea off. As just a minor aside please don't copy other people's jokes, I know the dodgeball joke at the end is only small, but plagiarism is strongly discouraged here. My overall feeling on the humour is that you have potential and I think that with more work this article could be a credit to uncyclopedia, the potential is there and I think you have the ability to turn that into a reality. I hope you work on this.
Concept:	3	As far as your concept goes I already mentioned that it would be a good idea to come up with an appropriate joke to compliment the basic concept, just to make the article more attractive to those who know very little about Clare GAA. My main concern here is your tone, since uncyclopedia is a parody of wikipedia you should aim to use an encyclopaedic tone in your work, as can be seen here, or an informal first person tone, as seen here. My recommendation would be that you adopt the encyclopaedic tone as this would work best with what you already have and is best for parodying the wikipedia article. The important thing when using this tone is to never offer an opinion or be colloquial, thus you should try to avoid saying things like "...despite large numbers of votes from the Clare people, the Irish Republic voted for the song "The Voice" which ultimately won the competition. (Chew on that England!)" This makes the narrative voice of the article sound unprofessional which is a real blow to the potential for humour from the encyclopaedic tone. If you want to say something and present an opinion you would be better being subtle with it. For example, were I writing about Darth Vader and I wanted to say that he is evil I would say something like "Darth Vader is often said to be somewhat harsh when dealing with foreign policy issues". While that isn't hilarious I hope it makes the point well enough. Check out the featured articles I recommended above if you are still unsure of what to do.
Prose and formatting:	4	Your prose are OK, but I did notice a few spelling and grammar issues as I read through. I won't talk too much about these right now as they are likely to disappear if you start making major changes to the text as I have suggested. However for future reference I would strongly recommend proofreading your work upon completion to ensure such errors do not appear in your final version. If you don't enjoy proofreading then you can always call upon the proofreading service who will be more than happy to do it for you. The other problem here is your images, there are plenty of them but they are quite badly formatted, again a common problem for newer editors. My recommendation is that there should be some space between all your images to ensure they don't look like they ahve been run into each other, you should also try to avoid having two images opposite each other on the page as it causes the text to be squeezed in between. Again, we will have to wait to see how this fits if you decide to make major changes, just bear this in mind.
Images:	5	Your images are reasonable, but often they compliment a random or strange joke. I won't go into too much depth here, but would strongly recommend that you try to relate the images to the text appropriately, the final image for instance, seems to have no real purpose in the article, am I missing something here? My final point is that you should also keep an eye on your captions, these are very important to your images and definitely worth taking time over, again, if you are rewriting, leave images and captions until last and then try to integrate them with the text, take time doing this, as it is worth doing right.
Miscellaneous:	4	My overall grade of the article.
Final Score:	19	You have the ability and potential to write excellently, and, according to the article talk page some people already enjoy what you have written. My feeling is that if you work at the humour here, far more people will enjoy this one, remember to use HTBFANJS as much as you feel is necessary and don't be afraid to ask for help. I realise there are a lot of negatives in this review and would urge you not to be discouraged, as I said at the start, I want to help you, not discourage you. Remember that this review is just my opinion and suggestions and that plenty of other opinions are available. If you do have any questions or comments pertaining to the review or the article then please do not hesitate to contact me on my talk page. Good luck making any changes.
Reviewer:	--ChiefjusticePS2 12:40, February 22, 2010 (UTC)