Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Oomph!
Oomph![edit source]
Dementedarts 21:39, October 31, 2010 (UTC)
| Humour: | 4 | Howdy young noob, welcome to the site and thanks for contributing. Now, let's take a look at your article here. Ok, while the article is by no means crap or anything, it does fall into the same traps that a lot of first articles fall into, such as the traps of random humour, esoteric content and Uncyclopedic clichés. These are typical of most first articles, however you have done quite a good job of avoiding them compared to other users. Anyway, I'll talk you through these now.
First of all I'll talk about random humour. Now to be blunt; random humour is bad. As I said, you don't have as much of an issue with this as a lot of new users do, but you do slip into it here and there. I don't know if you've read How to be funny and not just stupid but I find it's an invaluable guide to writing for this site. In fact it should be able to tell you why random humour is bad and how to tackle it better than I ever could. Claims that the guitarist is the devil and that the bassist ate a monkey are good examples of what I would call random humour, and such jokes aren't very effective in my opinion. The main problem with random humour is that isn't satirical. It doesn't matter what the topic is, because you could be making the same joke about anything. I could write an article on Pink Floyd and say that they were a company that manufactured cheese. This wouldn't be funny because it's not relevant. I could easily say that they were a political party in the UK, or a disease caused by toads - and it would have exactly the same effect. I could say any of these things about any other band or celebrity too, and that's why it's not funny. You have to come up with jokes that are relevant to the band, preferably something more believable. It would be ideal if you could come up with some kind of running gag that people will be able to associate with them alone. This actually leads me quite nicely to my next point, so I'll start a new paragraph and tie it all together there. What doesn't help the randomness is that the subject matter you're exploring here is quite esoteric; not many people are going to know much about the band, and it may only be understandable by those who do. This is another thing that happens to a lot of new users, they come here and write about a band they love or a band they hate (usually some kind of obscure metal band) and it usually has the effect of bemusing most readers. Now again, I think a running gag will really help with this - something stereotypical about European metal bands that you can make fun of, and that readers will immediately be able to comprehend even if they haven't heard of the group. For a good example of what I mean, take a look at this article on a similar concept. This is an article I love, despite the fact that I had never heard of the band when I read it. However, I knew a little about Japanese culture and the vanity of rock stars, and that's what the article plays on. They're really quite broad topics that the general readership will be able to understand. So have a think about what you can come up with here. Remember; make sure it isn't esoteric and make sure it isn't random. Ok, so now moving on to clichés. I remember what it's like to be a new user, still enthusiastic and excited by what this amazing site can do. The problem is, most of the things it can do have already been done a zillion times, and anyone who's been reading it for a while (registered user or otherwise) is unlikely to find any of it funny. I'll give you a few examples; first of all there's the "whoops" joke. Everyone here is really tired of these, and I wouldn't advise you use them unless you can come up with a totally original way of doing so (if such a thing still exists after nearly six years). IT's not just that the idea is clichéd, the way you use them here is also very clichéd. Check other band articles and you can pretty much always find the same joke - usually as a way of implying that the two bands are basically the same. My advice, to be honest, would probably be to just get rid of it along with the opening quotes. Opening quotes are similarly overused and tiresome. I find that the jokes they tell would probably be better off if they were told in the form of prose. However, the ones you have here aren't really even jokes, I'm not sure what they are. Right, one last thing in terms of humour - lists. As you will no doubt discover upon reading HTBFANJS, lists are also bad. My problem with them personally is that they tend to skim over jokes rather than getting to grips with them. A significant portion of the article is made up of a list of albums with silly and largely unfunny titles. I'm guessing they're a play on the actual albums titles or something. You know what would be better than a rushed list that most non-fans probably won't get? Sections of humorous prose giving a bit of background on the albums, or indeed interesting information about what was going on at the time - much like the X Japan articles I linked to before does. Same with the trivia section - ditch this and rework whatever you can into a biography section or one of the character sections. Trivia lists are very difficult to make funny, again because they are cursory and it is difficult to avoid being a bit random with them. All that aside, there are some amusing things in here. I liked the tattoo idea, and the subsequent dismay of them getting famous, so it's not all bad. But have a think about what I've said regarding a running joke, and see what you can do about the lists. I reckon that will really help get this article into better shape. |
| Concept: | 3 | Ok, so as of now you don't really have a concept, although "angle" might be a more accurate term for what I mean here. At the moment you're just writing about the band without really focussing on anything, and just making any jokes that spring to mind. While this isn't necessarily bad, and probably has worked for other articles in the past, I think an article like this would really benefit from something less scattergun, mainly because it's such an obscure topic. Take a look at our best of and note how those articles tend to have an interesting angle, usually playing off the popular conception of that subject. Particularly try to read other music or celebrity based ones and see how they tackle it. There is really no rule for when it comes to concept, and you don't necessarily have to stick close to the truth (as long as it's satirical). Take a look at this article for a rather original take. There are endless possibilities! |
| Prose and formatting: | 5 | Your spelling is good, but what could do with a little work more here is your grammar. A spellchecker should be able to assist with this, so I would definitely recommend you paste it into MS Word or something similar. Just for future reference, your main problems seem to be with full stops (periods if you're American), commas and capitalisation - generally the things involved with starting and ending sentences. The rules, should you not already be aware of them, are that a full stop comes at the end of a sentence, and the first letter of the next should be capitalised. You don't capitalise after a comma. Also, sentences should end when you're done talking about that specific topic (or if you need to make a dramatic pause in the flow). Commas should separate clauses in sentences, so if you're saying "Tom's mum, who was hot, died yesterday". The addition that she is hot is a separate clause. In your article, commas and full stops seem to come in totally random places, as do capital letters, so take another look at these issues. Otherwise, get someone to proofread it for you. There is a proofreading department too, so they may be able to help you. |
| Images: | 2 | Well, you only have two, and they're just headshots of some of the musicians, so there's not many points for you there I'm afraid. The first one is ok because the caption makes a bit of a joke and the guy has a funny face, but the second doesn't seem to have much relevance in terms of caption or where it's positioned. You really need images all the way down for the article to look its best, and you need a big establishing image to go with the intro - like they have on Wikipedia. Again, a quick look at some of our featured articles should give you an idea of how to illustrate your writing. |
| Miscellaneous: | 4 | The article as a whole. |
| Final Score: | 18 | Right, so for a first article this isn't all that bad really. Key things to remember however are to try and get some kind of running gag in there; I think it will really help, or just generally focus your angle a little more. You don't exactly need to have an angle but whatever you do, try to avoid random humour and make the jokes less esoteric. It's totally up to you where you go with this of course, these are ultimately just my opinions, but I also try to consider what other more seasoned readers might think when they come across this. Anyway, I look forward to seeing you continue working on it. If there's anything I've said here that you want me to explain better, or if you want my opinion on anything I might have missed, please let me know and I'll try to help. I hope the review is ok. |
| Reviewer: | --Black Flamingo 23:54, December 16, 2010 (UTC) | |