Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/HowTo:Write a Progressive Rock Song (rewrite)
HowTo:Write a Progressive Rock Song [edit source]
I done rewrote this a bit. --Guildensternenstein 03:49, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
March 5th? I'll review this over the weekend out of pity. --Pleb SYNDROME CUN medicate (butt poop!!!!) 04:39, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
| Humour: | 6 | I admit that I don't have a lot of experience with prog rock, and that I can't reliably distinguish prog from alt from classic from punk pop black death metal with Keynesian influences. The only bands you've mentioned that I've really listened to are Pink Floyd and The Mars Volta. So whatever you wrote about progressive rock, I could only take your word for it. So, having said that, this article seems too close to the truth to be really funny. "Okay, so I have to be a smart European with an exotic name to be successful. It's probably true that many prog rock bands are European, have trendy names, and pretend to be intellectual. Why am I being told this and how is this funny?"
I guess what's supposed to be going on here is that the narrator is a prog rock expert talking down to potential wannabes, but that didn't really come across. It was only halfway through the article, and from paying close attention to the image captions, that I realized the article was supposed to be self-referential. That totally blew my mind because I didn't get anything up until that point. How to fix this? I'd suggest developing a stronger lead, as well as changing some of the "they" when talking about good prog artists to "we". The HowTo namespace lends itself to a rigid structure, and so does your writing style, judging from your D&D articles and other stuff. That doesn't help here, because really, why would someone want to be dry and encyclopedic about something as awesome as prog rock? To summarize everything I've said until this point, put a little emotion into it, because otherwise it feels very legitimately like a guide on how to write a progressive rock song. Parody doesn't work if it's indistinguishable from its source, which is why we can't copy and paste articles from Conservapedia and call it comedy. Back to the lead: It's on the right track, but it doesn't seem full enough for the article. Go a little more in depth as to how awesome prog rock is, and how much discipline and effort it would take for you, a commoner, to write a good song. Just give us more of a taste of what to expect in the article, so we won't be stumped for half of it like I was. "The Opposite Method" confused me. I don't know what the typical prog rock song is about, so as I said before I'm just going with what you tell me, but since you highlight boring things as a good example of what to write about, does that mean I should write about interesting things because you're telling me to do the opposite? What? If this is supposed to be contradictory, please elaborate on it, because right now it looks like an accident. Repetition here is used with mixed success. Repetition spanning an article is good. Repetition in a single list of objects is overused, but it's excusable once, but you do it twice (with King Crimson and with criticizing the music industry). Tone it down a little, at least the part about the music industry. Another thing I'd like to see is more band name dropping. At first I was like, "WTF, I don't know what any of these bands represent," but doing it more (especially in the lead and the example song) would help iron out some problems with the lead I mentioned, as well as reinforce the idea of how elitist and knowledgeable the narrator is compared to the average grunt with a middlin' IQ. Yeah. |
| Concept: | 7 | I think the concept is doable, but challenging. If you can "finish" this article without stepping on the toes of the already featured Prog Rock and without playing on the progressive rock = pretentious joke too much, I'll be impressed. |
| Prose and formatting: | 7 | No one's saying you don't know how to format a wiki article. One gripe I have, however, is that some sections look dense like a normal Wikipedia article would while other sections have a lot of whitespace, like the bullet lists or the example song. You might want to drop to a smaller header size too in the example, because with the big bold headers, it's not clear at a glance that the example is supposed to be one fluid song.
The way all the images are squares on the right side of the screen only reinforces the rigid feel I mentioned earlier. You might want to throw some to the left. |
| Images: | 8 | Not much to say here. The ensemble you have works fine with the captions. Despite any complaints I might have, like the images are kinda the same and they're not original chops, I wouldn't change anything. |
| Miscellaneous: | 7 | A miscellaneous nitpick: Take out the line requesting an article on Rush. I think Rush Limbaugh works fine, and besides, someone as knowledgeable and enthusiastic about prog rock as the narrator aught to the able to write one.
It also feels too blunt where the lyrics say that you're smarter than me. Can't you just talk about Nietzsche instead or something? |
| Final Score: | 35 | I imagine this is a good niche article. Progressive rock fans will come to Uncyclopedia and love it, even if not everyone else does. They can't all be features, bro. |
| Reviewer: | --Pleb SYNDROME CUN medicate (butt poop!!!!) 02:59, 19 April 2009 (UTC) | |