Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Night

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Night

I added the number 2 most requested article. Why Derby is more popular than night I don't know, as I have been to Derby and there is nothing interesting to write about it. Mangotastic 18:09, December 1, 2009 (UTC)

I've been sucking way to much recently, so I might just blow this one. 24 hours, right? Pup

By most requested article, do you mean Uncyclopedia:Requested Articles as I didn't see it in the history immediately before this article began. Perhaps you meant it had the second most links to it of an article that hadn't been written? It looks like between 200 and 250 articles linked to it. In any case, thanks for starting it! King of the Internet Alden Loveshade??? (royal court)  18:55, December 3, 2009 (UTC)

It's a linkage thing. The original night was huffed not that long ago. Pup

All right; I'll check further back in the history. Thanks. King of the Internet Alden Loveshade??? (royal court)  20:46, December 3, 2009 (UTC)

I checked before and after changes on version 4225670 17 Nov. 2009, and Night wasn't listed. To qualify for Uncyclopedia:Requested Articles, it would have needed to have been requested at the time it was created, and it wasn't. But so what? I'm just being nitpicky. The article had a bunch of links to it when it didn't exist, and now it has a bunch when it does exist. Good, and I look forward to improvements! King of the Internet Alden Loveshade??? (royal court)  20:58, December 3, 2009 (UTC)

Reviewer details:

A little bit about the reviewer before we start.

Okay, just so you know who I am. I joined Uncyclopedia June 5, 2009, after floating around here for a few days as an IP. In the intervening 5 months, I have managed to rack up 12 featured articles, a PLS win, a PLS 2nd runner up, ROTM, NOTM, WOTM and the Greasy Mechanic award for CW. So in short, I have no life. I like to think that I know a little bit about writing, and a little bit about humour, and I like to make other people think that too. Once I've completed this review I expect you to say the same (as I can always come back and up the scores - don't tell the Steel Kidneys though. They already hate me for my new template.)

Speaking of new template, this is the same as the standard PEE template, but it adds in a little more detail and doesn't take up as much white room. I do change the order, however, as like a few of the other Steel Kidneys I feel that a joke is lost if it is badly written.

Prose and Formatting:

How good does it look and how well does it read? 5

{{{Pcomment}}}

Writing style

Okay, let's first have a look at HTBFANJS as it is an extremely useful document when trying to work out if your article sinks or swims. We'll start with HTBFANJS#The Big Picture: Understand the "Frame" of the Uncyclopedia Setup. This is basically the starting point that you need to consider when writing here. The main thing I'll point out is that we are a satire of an encyclopedia, which means that when we write we want it to feel/sound/look/taste like an encyclopedia. (We don't want it to smell like an encyclopedia though. That would be silly.)

So that means if you read an article you need to say to yourself Would this look out of place in Wikipedia? If the answer is yes, then there may be an issue there. Of course this isn't true for every article. Yahoo is a satire about Yahoo, and as such it's meant to look like that site. If you go through UnTunes or UnNews these are meant to be a satire of songs and print media.

However with this article you have nowhere to really go in that regard. It 's possible that you could have the article as just a big picture of a starry sky, much like smog or knot, and that might work, but there are only a few of those types of articles around and very few of them work as anything except an inside joke.

So for your writing style, you want to sound as though you are an authority on night. This is not exactly an easy task, and is why many writers have steered away from the topic. But it can be done. I can think of an example in a Discworld novel. I've cut and paste the passage I'm thinking of at the end of this review, so you can see what I mean.

Spelling

The only misspelled words really are herecy (heresy) and Capernicus (Copernicus). Beyond that the rest of the spelling is fine, although I would suggest hyphenating lightbulb and capitalising satan.

Grammar

Okay, you've committed the cardinal sin. No, I'm not talking about insulting the Catholic church. I'm referring to the misuse of the word it's versus its. It's is an abbreviation for it is, whereas its denotes ownership. I do this all the time, by the way, which is why I get people who are really grammar good does my proofreading.

Layout

Layout is fair, but a couple of niggling issues. The first of these is that most people looking at Uncyclopedia will look at the pages with the TOC shown. this means that you have an introduction, a TOC, with a bunch of white space next to it, and then the article. Here you have white space before the first line, after the first line, a template right floating, and then it gets into the TOC with white space. The way I would set this out (assuming you use that template) is to have no white space before the first line, only a one line space after, and the template moved to the base of this section so it floats right next to the TOC.

I also have an issue with images that go next to headings, and hyperlinks in headings. I did a little playing around with the layout and came up with this which has kept the text as close as possible to the original, but tidies up a few of these issues. The unfortunate thing is because you have such short sections, there is no way to avoid this completely, however I prefer to see a little white space created by {{-}} then to see headings squeezed next to images.

Overall appearance

Okay, I have been really picky in this area, but as I said before without having your humour presented in the most effective way your jokes will fall flat. I also tend to be critical on these reviews as I looking for the way it can be improved. Either that or I am an evil minded bastard.

Concept

How good an idea is behind the article? 4

Concept - the cohesive factor upon which an article lives or dies. It is possible to write a humorous article without having a concept, however this means that you end up stringing together a whole line of one-liners with no meta-joke. One example of this is, unfortunately, carebears which it is my unfortunate burden to admit that I wrote this as one of my earlier attempts. Carebears dies because of a lack of cohesion. Love, on the other hand, is one of my more successful articles which works because it does have a cohesive whole. There is a meta-joke started in the introduction, and each section is a joke in itself, and within each section is a number of throw away gags.

(I do have a tendency to refer to my own work. That is because I know what I wrote better than anything else. It is also because I am ego-centric)

So you have a concept here, but it is a weak one because it has been set up poorly, and it fails to come to a punch at the end. You have taken a topic (night), crossed it with a bit of real stupidity (the doctrines of the Catholic Church) and made a parallel between the two. Isaac The Tank Engine uses a very similar device. You need to set-up your humour here with a little more strength.

One thing I am impressed to see that you did was use the Wikipedia article on night for reference. Understanding what you are going to be satirising is a huge step towards a successful satire. What I did see missed was a substantial opportunity to take more of what they had and twist it around.

For example

Throughout the rest of history, night has primarily been a time of resting and sleep for humans, since little work or labor can be done in the dark. On the other hand, clandestine activities such as romance, sex, prostitution, crime and police activity flourish. Wikipedia, Night

Can become

Although traditionally night has been a time where good working, holy minded people are asleep in bed, people who are habitually steeped in sin are known to be out on the town and living it up: Romance flourishes, and people get all squelchy together; Prostitution is abundant, and many otherwise untalented women manage to make a substantial income; Criminals gather together in packs and do criminal things; And the police get paid overtime to sit in their squad cars and eat doughnuts.

Humour

How funny is it? Why is it funny? How can it be funnier? 5

I didn't really feel a laugh anywhere in this one. There were a couple of lines that had promise in here, and a few good thoughts behind them, but without having them pushed forward they fell slightly flat.

Images

How are the images? Are they relevant, with good quality and formatting? 7

Good choice of images, and they complimented the text well. I would like to see more text along with them though, as the images themselves were not funny, but they worked with what you were trying to do. The highest point of humour for me was the picture of the Opera house

Miscellaneous

The article's overall quality - that indefinable something. 7

Okay, I have been harsh with this review. I always am harsh, not because I don't think you've done a good piece of work, but because I think it could be done better. The only time I am not a harsh is when the only thing I can say about an article is "you could also try doing this."

I think you have a good concept and a good way of thinking humorously, but you fail to get that onto the page. With a little work at getting more punchy, more detailed, and more cohesive with this article, it could sing like a birdie. (Note, a score of 28 actually puts you at the nearly adequate level, and this looks to be like a work in progress, so definitely do not give up on it now.)

Final score

Prose 5	Concept 4	Humour 5	Images 7	Misc 7	Final Score 28

Summary

An overall summation of the article.

{{{Fcomment}}}

This was a PEE review by Pup

“ It was a still night, tinted with the promise of dawn. A crescent moon was just setting. Ankh-Morpork, largest city in the lands around the Circle Sea, slept.

That statement is not really true.

On the one hand, those parts of the city which normally concerned themselves with, for example, selling vegetables, shoeing horses, carving exquisite small jade ornaments, changing money and making tables, on the whole, slept. Unless they had insomnia. Or had to get up to go to the lavatory. On the other hand, many of the less law-abiding citizens were wide awake and, for instance, climbing through windows that didn’t belong to them, slitting throats, mugging one another, listening to loud music in smoky cellars and generally having a lot more fun. But most of the animals were asleep, except for the rats. And the bats, too, of course. As far as the insects were concerned . . .

The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entirely accurate and during the reign of Olaf Quimby II as Patrician of Ankh some legislation was passed in attempt to put a stop to this sort of thing and introduce some honesty into reporting. Thus, if a legend said of a notable hero that “all men spoke of his prowess” any bard who valued his life would add hastily “except for a couple of people in his home village who thought he was a liar, and quite a lot of other people who had never really heard of him.” Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like “his mighty steed was fleet as the wind on a fairly calm day, say about Force Three,” and any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne.

Quimby was eventually killed by a disgruntled poet during an experiment conducted in the palace grounds to prove the disputed accuracy of the proverb “The pen is mightier than the sword,” and in his memory it was amended to include the phrase “only if the sword is very small and the pen is very sharp.”

So. Approximately sixty-seven, maybe sixty-eight percent of the city slept.

Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

”