Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Israel Withdrawing to 1948 Borders
User:Phrage/UnNews:Israel Withdrawing to 1948 Borders[edit source]
Please review as this was rejected by Mordillo for UN News first time round -any hints suggestions gratefully received. ⦿⨦⨀ Phrage (talk) 09:19, August 24, 2010 (UTC)
- Comment: Can you use the version in your user space for review rather than the one that is likely to be deleted some time soon in the mainspace. -- Sir Mhaille
(talk to me)
- Was it you or Mordillo or someone else who tidied it up so much -thank you whomever did When i say tidy I mean transformed.
am I allowed to put that version back here now ? – Preceding unsigned comment added by Phrage (talk • contribs)
- Have patience, Phrage. Keep that version in your userspace until it's ready. --UU - natter
10:43, Aug 24
- It was me that did a little editing. Normally I, and other writers tend to keep articles under construction in our userspaces for a few days, and in some cases weeks or even months, until we are completely happy that the article is good for general release. Its a good place to store ideas so that you can keep coming back to them until you are happy that they are the best that you can do. Again the best thing you can do is to have a look how other articles have been put together and see what works well. -- Sir Mhaille (talk to me)
- It was me that did a little editing. Normally I, and other writers tend to keep articles under construction in our userspaces for a few days, and in some cases weeks or even months, until we are completely happy that the article is good for general release. Its a good place to store ideas so that you can keep coming back to them until you are happy that they are the best that you can do. Again the best thing you can do is to have a look how other articles have been put together and see what works well. -- Sir Mhaille
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PEE REVIEW IN PROGRESS of giving you his opinion and pretending you care. |
| Humour: | 5 | Hey, Phrage, and welcome to Uncyclopedia! So, I see you asked me to look this over in a comment you left at Brittany Hensel, which is kind of an odd place to request a Pee Review, but... fair enough. I also see that you've had a bit of a rocky start in your first few days here, and your first two efforts were rejected outright. Let me just run through this article and let you know what you were doing wrong; it'd be nice to get you on track.
Actually, this article wasn't half as bad as I expected it to be. The main problems are the writing and the formatting. Let's talk about the writing first. You seem to have a habit of writing really long sentences that are punctuated in an unusual way. This makes your writing a little hard to read. For example, your first sentence (and paragraph) is:
That's kind of a mess. There are so many dependent clauses in that thing! And it's hard to string them together. Keep your prepositional phrases together whenever possible: "in a surprise move" should not be on the other side of the verb from "in a Knesset speech." It would have been better to write:
This is a theme through your whole article: you're using one sentence where you should have used two or even three. I'd recommend that time-honored strategy of reading your article out loud to yourself. I think you'll find that it doesn't sound very much like the way that newscasters talk; when you say these sentences out loud, they get so long and confusing that you've forgotten what they're about by the time they're over. But, I'll touch on that later. With respect to the specific humor content: The overarching joke that Israel was simply trying to make the place nice for the Palestinians to move into is absurd, and that's funny, and I like it. But you don't spend much time exploring that concept before going straight to "world reaction," which is not quite as funny. I feel like "reaction" should be the bottom 25% of the article - not the bottom 75%. Clinton not getting it isn't very funny and could probably be removed. All the stuff about Ahmedinejad being a swishy supermodel falls really flat. Around here, we've heard enough gay jokes to last a lifetime. Randomly making a politican gay is the kind of thing we roll our eyes at and delete. Palin's total lack of understanding of the situation, combined with a malapropism, is funny. But the second half of that sentence just gets weird and unfunny. I'd lose everything after "put their differences aside." Then we have Iceland going to some kind of gay olympics, which is just more pointless gay stuff that should go away. Then trannies for some reason and a repetition of the thing about Ahmedinejad being gay. Lose that; it's lame. The final paragraph, the idea that the withdrawal inspired the U.S. to give all its territory back to the Natives, is a funny idea - but the paragraph itself is a train wreck that needs rewriting. |
| Concept: | 8 | The concept of this article is the best part. The idea that Israel was just trying to give nice things to the Palestinians all along is funny; the idea that this inspired the U.S. to repatriate Native American lands is funny. So, you've got something to work with here. |
| Prose and formatting: | 1 | Your prose and formatting are a disaster.
We've already talked about the prose; you've got to get those long, confusing sentences under control. The formatting is even worse. The picture next to the article - the article's main illustration - makes absolutely no sense until you read all the way to the end, and I have literally no idea what the caption means. Romartus has gone through and seemingly randomly bolded and italicized things. I know that's not your fault, but I would like to point out that in actual newspapers and online news articles, the proper nouns are not bold and the quotes are not italic! Why the heck did we start doing that?? But the biggest problem is the three pictures hanging off the bottom. They're dropped in practically at random. They aren't resized, the captions don't appear beneath them; frankly, it's just a mess and it makes the whole article look like a big mistake. |
| Images: | 2 | You need a picture that illustrates the actual article - like a picture of Israelis and Palestinians being friendly to each other, or something. Illustrating it with a Native American is confusing and probably worse than no picture at all. The old-timey painting has nothing to do with the article and isn't funny, and Borat has no place in an article that isn't about him. The picture at the bottom could possibly be useful, but not with a ridiculous caption saying they're a dance troupe. |
| Miscellaneous: | 4 | This article is really rough, and it needs a lot of work. But, like I said, the concept is good, and some of the jokes actually work; it does have some promise. |
| Final Score: | 20 | 20 is not a good Pee Review score. Most articles with scores like this end up deleted; yours has merely been moved to your userspace to give you a chance to work on it.
And it does need work. Work on the writing!! Say it out loud, and make sure your sentences are no longer than they need to be. To be funny, the writing in a piece needs to be crisp, clear, and understandable; no one will read a comedy article if they have to work too hard for the payoff. Once you fix the writing, everything else should fall into place. I would consider removing everything I suggested and starting from there; the article will be short, at that point, but that will give you an opportunity to add content that isn't gay jokes. Good luck! And, again, welcome to Uncyclopedia! |
| Reviewer: |  pillow talk 22:11, August 25, 2010 (UTC)
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