Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Princess Diana
Princess Diana[edit source]
This article is mostly a rewrite from an earlier one which I generally found too random. I've kept some of the original quotes and images. I think the funniest bit is the reference to "The Pink People's Penis Pumper" of which I take no credit for at all. Calindreams 09:14, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
- I'm in here! and this may be my anus horrible-us Pup
| Prose and Formatting: The writing style, spelling, grammar, layout and overall appearance. |
5 | Okay, I'll start here with the layout as this is the first thing that bugged me when looking at this article. We start off with the first view of this piece where we have three quotes (being 1, 3, and 2 lines respectively), and extremely unfortunate photograph that has no relevance to the topic under discussion, a small introductory paragraph, in which you mention Monkeys in Space, Cloned Sheep, Greek Goddess, Mother Teresa, Elton John, and Charlie zu Glücksburg, which is apparently a pseudonym for Prince Charles, the top of the contents box, and {{wikipedia}}.
The second view (which means I've hit page down once) is getting into the meat of the article, and the top of the second image on the left hand side of the page. Third view is the latter half of the image, and a bit more text. The fourth and last view gives us the image of the limo and the horses outside. (Which now I've clicked on the image I've found out that they're Nazguls. In my defence I may not have seen that detail, but the scene did look like it was shot in either Australian or New Zealand.) Okay, my issue here is that you need to grab me, the reader, as soon as I click onto your article. I've come here from either a) a link elsewhere in Uncyclopedia that brings me here and I'm expecting to be here, b) a "Random page" link that I know will take me somewhere in Uncyclopedia but I don't know where c) a link from another website that has taken me to here and in which case I may not be even expecting to get to a website at all, or d) 100 monkeys have typed for 100 years and managed to pop in the exact URL that will take me here, and in which case I'd just be amazed that Bubbles and co have gotten me anywhere. So what you need to do is grab me in and keep me in. So is that likely to be done with the first view? Okay, a crying woman is the first thing that grabs me - I hate being grabbed by crying women - and an insult to the British - there's a substantial chunk of your audience who have just gone to check their twitter pages there. The second thing is a bunch of quotes - including ones by Camilla Parker Bowles and Agatha Christie - given that you've already lost the English the main part of your audience that are going to stay here after those two names are going to be members of the Commonwealth most likely. And then you throw at us Mother Teresa - that's most of the Christians gone - and Elton John - that's the rest of them. So at this stage you're left with an agnostic/atheist from Australia reading it. Trim down the start of the article. Either get rid of the quotes, drop it down to one, or if you really have to have them all in there, make them cycle through <choose><option>{{q|This is the first quote}}</option><option>{{q|this is the next quote}}</option></choose> style. Change the image here to either one of Diana with a good comment, or at least something that is not off putting. I'll come back to the choice and the captions of the images later, but these should not break the flow of the text. The reason Okay, so from there onto the spelling and grammar. Tragicly a spelling error in first paragraph. Four grammatical errors in the second paragraph, which given that there are only four sentences is a bit of a feat. I'm not going any further, but if you are going to put something up for review 1) run it through a spell checker, 2) proof read it yourself, 3) put it through to UN:PROOF. The overall appearance of your piece lets you down dramatically and automatically loses you readers. Your goal as a writer is to get an audience reading, no matter what your writing for. Statistically, people will look at a web page for the first time for three seconds before they decide if they want to continue reading or not. You either have to grab them within that three seconds, or never see them again. |
| Concept: How good an idea is behind the article? |
6 | Now this is a hard one to comment on in relationship to the concept, as this is an article about Princess Diana, which there had been one since (checks history) Abbot Vesuvius created it in April 2005. And more to the point, there has to be an article about Princess Diana. If there wasn't one someone would have to make it, as it's a topic that any self-respecting encyclopaedia should have an article on. I don't know if Uncyclopedia fits into the category of self-respecting, but we work harder. [Of course not!]
Where you'll have a problem with this article, much the same as articles on any member of the English Royal Family, is that almost any joke you can make about the English Royal family has been made before. Going back to the start of recorded history almost, we've been making fun of the royals. A small factoid: Did you know that the poem "Georgie Porgie" is reported based upon a real individual, that of King George V. He even described himself as being "too fond of women and wine." When you have that sort of history to compete with, coming up with something new and surprising is difficult, and surprise is one of the key elements of all humour. Nobody ever expects the Spanish Inquisition. You have a few options here. 1) Write consistent nonsense: One possible way to break the problem above is to come up with a new angle on the existing concept. Diana as a Greek God is a new take, or at least not so overdone that I've heard it before, and one that deserved more than the one line and one paragraph that it was given. 2) Go in deeper. Research your topic and get into the depths and nitty gritty of the truth. Find every single grain of information about her life and then use that with a touch of exageration to make it funny. (See humour below) 3) Change the entire concept to be written by a royal fan rather than a cynic. Read what has been done to Michael Jackson in the past as that is a good example of how over the top fanboyism makes this article zing. |
| Humour: How funny is it? Why is it funny? How can it be funnier? |
4 | Okay, I'm going to suggest you go away and read HTBFANJS before you read any further. Once you've done that come back here.
Good, okay we'll continue. The first thing I'm going to say here is that the life of Princess Diana is public record. In fact the life of Di is beyond what would be termed public record and getting into the category of spam. I don;t think I have ever read a single article or story about Princess Diana by choice, yet I know so much of her life simply by sitting in doctors waiting rooms and seeing the front covers of every single magazine there. So given that we know so much about her life, why are we delving into the depths of untrue in order to make funny. Given the Advice about nonsense and opposites, we have plenty of raw material to work on. Sorry, you don't know what I'm talking about. I thought you said you'd read HTBFANJS. That's okay, go back and read it again and come back here.
Fantastic. So getting into the consistency with nonsense rule. As I mentioned before you started off with a fantastic spin on the whole article with the stuff about Diana being a Greek God. But then it vanished. It veered over into something about Diana on a hay ride, and then holding a gay man's penis, and then dying in France. It spiralled and spun like one of those spinny things. If I can't follow the "comic reality" that you have created here, then I'm not going to find this funny and you've just given me a string of one liners. You aren't aware of the consistency and nonsense rule. Okay, please read HTBFANJS for real this time and come back again.
Okay, into a few negative points here. Having a look at the @#$%^&* rule, you've delved way too deeply into... no, don't tell me, let me guess. Go back and read HTBFANJS and come back again.
All right, I'm going to dive right into this. In-jokes, stagnant jokes and meta-humour are kept to a minimum. Well done! Clichés are in there but the bigger issue with this is not the fact that clichés are in here but the entire voice doesn't get anywhere near the encyclopaedic feel. If you consciously bring the tone of the voice up to that of a royal scholar or an English grammar teacher then you'll nix most of that. Maybe taking on some of the concepts of status change and irony would work, but make sure that you don't fall into the sarcasm trap. Read the advice section at the end of HTBFANJS, and work out if you've been following that. And read the basic techniques as you have none of them in there. Especially repetition, that's a favourite of mine. In short, just read HTBFANJS. |
| Images: How are the images? Are they relevant, with good quality and formatting? |
4 | One of the recent reverts you did was to put the picture of the crying woman back into the article that someone had removed. As a review I'd say that you missed a definite clue as to what was killing your article. Why did someone want to remove it? Well, I can give a myriad of reasons, but any reason as to why it was removed has to be balanced against the reason as to why it was kept in there.
None of the images work. The first might work at the end of the article, as the whole concept of putting it in there was the expression of someone who had just read it, but definitely not at the start. The second is just an ugly picture - good for a nonsense article about nobility but doesn't work here. The last... well, as I said earlier I just didn't get the joke until I looked at your comments on the picture, and even then I have trouble seeing the "Nazgul" about it. Now I've flicked over and had a look at the German, Italian and Spanish versions of this page as well. The Italian one obviously relies of the captions to give this humour. The Spanish one - well, you can always feel superior to the potatochopping efforts of the Spanish. The German one though got me. The first image was high quality and although not inherently funny could sparkle with the right caption. The second one made me laugh. The wonderful thing about these two images is that they are free to take as they are already in Wikimedia Commons. |
| Miscellaneous: The article's overall quality - that indefinable something. |
4.75 | I have some concerns with going any further on this article as it is. Don't get me wrong, this is a good article to play with and work on your craft, polish up those humour muscles, and generally get things going. But as it stands it's somewhere above a vote for deletion, but somewhere below a vote for Highlight. |
| Final Score: How much can it be improved and what are the most important areas to work on. |
23.75 | There is nothing inherently wrong with this article. But to be honest the short summary on this is I just can't find the funny. It would need a 50% rewrite to make it funny, and an 80% rewrite to make it a feature.
I enjoyed the Greek Goddess line, I half like the ballet line. I can't say that I liked the way she was depicted as it changed too much through the article to keep me going. Was she intelligent but played at being dumb to piss people off, or was she just dumb? I liked the Blue Peter quote up until the last sentence. I liked the sight hint at mystery about her death, and think that that could be built upon, but there's just not enough of it. And I also think that although I haven't doubled the actual wordage of the original article, I wasn't far off. |
| Reviewer: | Pup | |
