Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Mahjong
Mahjong[edit source]
This article needs a lot of cuts. Its too long, but I don't know what to take out. I also jamed a lot of ideas in such a short time...so Im mainly looking for advice. :) ShabiDOO 14:13, May 16, 2011 (UTC)
- Per MadMax, I shall take a look at this one some time today. --ChiefjusticePS2 10:31, May 21, 2011 (UTC)
| Humour: | 6 | OK, to get something out of the way straight away, I have never played Mahjong myself, I'm usually far too busy having sex with ladies so I'm coming into this article with no preconceptions of how you should be writing. My very first impression of your article was that it was going to be excellent your style is superb and the jokes you make are intelligent and got several chuckles from me and as a result I feel somewhat harsh giving you a six for this section when your jokes regularly made me laugh. However as the article wore on I found that the humour became very hit and miss, some jokes I really enjoyed and others I didn't really find funny or understand particularly well. Permit me to expand, where your humour succeeds is in your casually disparaging style where you say things like "She mixed her peasant cousins with high society friends who all shared a common interest: none of them had anything productive in life to do and none of them seemed to mind being broke." That sort of joke I thought flowed really well with the article simply because, it made me laugh and works with the point you were making, that of how Mahjong became known in the cities. The first problem occurs with the regular insertion of italicised text at the end of paragraphs, indeed one such instance follows the quote above, ultimately I saw you were trying to encourage the idea that there is some kind of conspiracy involved here which is using Mahjong to permeate society, but for the life of me I can't figure out how. I read and re-read the article in an effort to figure this out but I'm still uncertain, forgive me if I'm being thick here but I'm just not getting it, is it that the game extracts a slavish kind of adherence from its players so they both hate losing money but love playing? I even got Mrs Chief to have a look at this one and she said she was having similar problems, so I feel justified in saying it is at the very least unclear. My feeling is that this is indicative of the main issue that the article has; you are trying to do far too much with the humour. Remember that while some running jokes are very useful and very amusing they should not necessarily detract from the text, if you look at this article and note how the joke that is ultimately made doesn't interfere with the rest of the text. My main point here is that it is sometimes better to be a bit more simplistic. I got the impression that you were trying to incorporate so many different themes into the article by the end that the ultimate thrust of the article stops being clear; I thought you were doing an excellent job of describing the game, the background to the game and some of the aspects to do with it but the conspiracy angle certainly threw me off.
As you say in your review request you have tried to jam a lot of ideas in here in a short time and I'd say that is an accurate suggestion of why this problem has arisen. My advice is that you go back and decide what you want to do with the conspiracy theory angle, you can get rid of it completely if you like or you can devote a bit more time to it and make it fit in better. You don't need to rework it too much to achieve this just try to find a way to explain how it is being done by making it a bit more obvious or by describing how the conspiracy manifests itself. I would urge you not to start removing the majority of your jokes regarding the game itself as these are excellent. As a general remedy to the problems here you need to decide where you want to go with the article, is it a satirical take on it, or do you want to introduce your own ideas? Once you have decided how you want the article to read then you should go through and make sure that it goes that way 100% of the time, because if you try and encompass every idea you have you may well end up with an article that does a lot but doesn't do anything particularly well. At the moment your article is doing brilliantly when you describe the game itself and its history but less well when you try to incorporate a variety of other themes into that. |
| Concept: | 8 | Generally your tone is good and your article manages to sound both factual and amusing, however I would advise against the use of profanity in your writing, while not finding swearing amusing is a personal opinion of mine (I know others find it very funny) a lack of profanity is a staple of the encyclopaedic style so should be avoided. Otherwise I don't think you need to much advice in this instance as you have a pretty firm grasp on this aspect. |
| Prose and formatting: | 8 | Your formatting and prose are absolutely fine. The main issue in this case is that you need to make sure you are proofreading the article properly as I noticed a number of errors as I read through, I corrected a couple of the more obvious ones that I noticed but the article does need a careful read through from you, either that or you can enlist the help of the proofreading service, you would probably be better served to ask a member on their talk page rather than simply adding the template. If you can sort that out then you will be absolutely fine here as well. |
| Images: | 6 | The main problem that I have here is that your images are linked to the text but in a way that makes one uncertain where a particular image fits in, the very first image excepted. My suggestion would be that you try to change your image captions so that they provide the link between your text and the image. Be sure to spend some time on these as they can really make or break a joke and add extra impact when you involve the image in a joke. The main thing here however is to make sure your images compliment your article as in a couple of cases at the moment I wasn't sure what you were doing with the images, a bit more work is necessary here. |
| Miscellaneous: | 7 | My overall grade of the article. |
| Final Score: | 35 | Ultimately I really like the article and would like to see it ultimately go on to VFH, however some work is required before then. You have the makings of something truly excellent here but you need to refine it and make some changes to the humour in particular. At present you are trying to do too much and all you need to do, in my view, to remedy that is to go back and spend a little while deciding what should stay and what needs removing or changing. If you have any questions or comments about this review then feel free to ask on my talk page, you can also find me on IRC. Good luck making any changes. |
| Reviewer: | --ChiefjusticePS2 14:25, May 22, 2011 (UTC) | |