Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Pz Myers

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Pz Myers

Please criticize constructively. Thank you for your business! CluelessPedestrian 23:11, February 17, 2010 (UTC)

I'll be doing this later tonight

cheers,

--Sir Skinfan13 Talk {< CUN RotM FBotM VFH ΥΣΣ Maj. SK >} 20:34 EST 22 Feb, 2010

Pushing it a bit here Skinfan, I realise you have lots of other stuff on but let's keep on target. Anyone else can review this now. --ChiefjusticeWii 10:24, February 23, 2010 (UTC)

yeah, I'm going to be traveling today, so I'll get to this tonight if I can. Anyone's welcome to review this in the meantime however --Sir Skinfan13 Talk {< CUN RotM FBotM VFH ΥΣΣ Maj. SK >} 08:52 EST 23 Feb, 2010

Doing this now... --Sir Skinfan13 Talk {< CUN RotM FBotM VFH ΥΣΣ Maj. SK >} 22:49 EST 23 Feb, 2010

Humour:	6	The way I review, I generally put the majority of my comments and suggestions in the humor section. This allows me to be lazy keep all of my thoughts organized. I'll give you my first impressions after one read through and then go in section by section for a more detailed look. Initial Impressions Well, I felt as though you started out strong: It felt clever at first, but it increasingly devolved into unintelligent Christian bashing. Along these same lines, the humor after the introduction in general was more stupid than funny. You also had a problem with keeping a consistent tone throughout. There were some pretty good portions mixed in with all of this, however, and I'll be sure to point out what worked and what didn't specifically so that you can improve this article. Section by Section Introduction You start off really well in your introduction, it takes a fairly encyclopedic tone, which is the best way to approach most of the topics here. I like the fake reference to conservapedia, but I'm not a big fan of your recurring infanticide by atheist cannibalism joke. It's just kinda dumb and over the top imo. What I particularly like about this section is that is deals with your topic (PZ Myers) with appropriate deviations for humor, but you stay on focus. This section is a good blueprint for how the rest of your article should be. Your best humor comes from taking a relatively neutral tone but with slight sarcasm, but without going overboard i.e. claiming he eats infants regularly. This section has plenty of examples of what I'm talking about, and I think the difference in content and tone from the rest of article is obvious enough that I don't need to go into incredible detail about it. Early Life This section is pretty good too. The squid joke is actually one I like throughout the article. granted it is stupid, but its quirky and non sequitur enough that it's more funny than dumb. I think keeping this line of recurring joke in the article is a good idea. There are some prose issues that I'll go into later within this section. I would also get rid of the banana thing, it really doesn't make any sense since that joke hasn't been introduced to the reader at all yet. Crackergate This section kinda of delves into the dumb factor, but you also have a good underlying concept that focuses on Myers' actions against the church instead of the church's actions against him. I won't even touch on the over 9000 joke, just know that mixing a dumb joke (the babies) with an extremely overused internet meme is probably not the best recipe for success. besides the babies jokes, what you have is funny and works: it isn't too over the top, it sounds realistic for the most part, and is fairly clever. I would find a different way to make the abortion joke at the end other than by having Myers eat a bunch of children. There's got to be some way to intelligently include it, like saying he went around spreading blasphemies in Sunday schools confusing children. This could not concern Donahue (who's a giant douche nugget by the way) since he doesn't care about children past the point of birth. This is a much more believable scenario compared to eating thousands of babies. Not saying you should necessarily do it that way, but you should change the joke. Intelligent Design This section is really the marking point of the decline of your article. You go way off track and change tone and insert a bunch of hyperbolic nonsense. This entire section ignores two important things: the topic of the section, Intelligent design, and Myers himself. This section should be centered on Myers and his beliefs and you do neither. This needs to change. get rid of the thousands of brain dead people, the debate, pretty much everything. sometimes when the foundations are rotting, the best thing to do is knock them out and start over. Comfort Vs. Myers The same exact thing goes for this section as does for the one above. Homeopathic Medicine This section is slightly better since it has more to do directly with Myers, but again, the section is mostly about other people's actions toward him. It should be the other way around. There are some good jokes here, especially the beer and cyanide bit, but this section, as with the others, really needs to be more focused on Myers and less on his detractors. Visit to Ireland This entire section feels extraneous. It needs to be changed or simply gotten rid of. Personal life This is probably a keeper, but I would suggest expanding this to cover a wider range of topics. Again, I like the squid jokes, but this section can't just ride on that, it needs something more. This is also a good section to add concluding words and wrap the article up nicely, not like a school essay conclusion, but just fiddle around with your last paragraph or last sentence so that the article doesn't just awkwardly end.
Concept:	5.5	Well, you start off with a good idea, taking a subtle sarcastic tone against those who detract from Myers based on his atheist stance, but you get away from that quite a bit in the middle. You need to focus more on the concept you set forth in your introduction. You also need to decide on a consistent tone throughout your article. look carefully through your article and you will notice a difference in tone between the introduction and the rest of your article. My recommendation is that you base your article off your introduction, in terms of content and tone. you also need to focus more on Myers, it is his article after all. I felt like I was reading more about homeopathic medicine and Ben Stein than about PZ Myers.
Prose and formatting:	6.5	You have some very noticeable grammar, spelling, and syntax errors throughout, things like missing obvious punctuation and incomplete sentences. An example of what I mean about syntax is the very first sentence of the article. While technically grammatically correct, the sentence flows awkwardly, especially at the point where you say ", and the bastard love child." I suggest you break this sentence up into two or more sentences. The way the sentence reads (and this wouldn't be correct on paper) suggests that there should be an "is" in there between and and the. This is why I suggest making two or more sentences, grammatically correct and good flow. Another example, "He recounts wistfully 'It was," there should be a comma right after wistfully. I would simply go through and proofread this carefully. read it aloud or softly to yourself, you'll catch a lot of errors this way. Also, under formatting, you should find a way to lower the "Intelligent design" subsection heading so it isn't smushed toward the middle by the picture to the left. You also have the category browser at the bottom of your article, I would get rid of this.
Images:	4	Okay, your images are relatively plain, and you have some good captions, but some a fairly boring as well. I'll go through and give my thoughts on each image and caption: This is a good introductory image for the article. Myers has a subtly uncomfortable look about him, almost devious or contemplative. If (and hopefully when) you remove the baby jokes, you'll have to change the caption. this picture is interesting enough to not present too much of a challenge in creating a relevant and funny caption. I would expand your infobox however since there really isn't much in there. At this risk of sounding extremely hypocritical because I use MS paint for all of my images, this really isn't a very good photoshop. You've used a picture of him in his middle age to represent his youth, which is a problem up front for suspending your believability, but you've also essentially placed a bunch of random objects onto him. I suggest getting rid of this image and finding a funny and applicable image somewhere else on teh internets. It doesn't even have to be a picture of Myers either. I feel that the caption is a little boring as well, I feel as though you should have no problem creating a wittier caption that conveys the same idea. Ritz crackers are not communion wafers. finding a picture of communion wafers, and even photoshoping a nail through one shouldn't be incredibly challenging (*preparing to put foot in mouth*). The caption is ambiguous and airy too. Get specific, use a zingin' one liner. something interesting. The banana joke went straight over my head. Makes no sense to me. Now this I liked. The puns in the caption are good too. The caption really is what makes this a good picture, I would try and duplicate this sort of caption on your others pictures. Your captions are a wonderful opportunity for one-liners that tie into the text, don't spoil them! Average image, above average caption. I would enlarge this image a bit and change "Uncyclopedia News" to simply "UnNews"
Miscellaneous:	5	my overall enjoyment of the article. I felt that this was a fairly average effort with good potential at the begging, but drops off fast.
Final Score:	27	This article has good foundations in the introduction. You need to build off of these foundations, the potential for a good article and the key to your success lies in the introduction my friend. If I had to build a simple plan of attack for improving this article, it would be: replace the baby jokes give the article a consistent tone focus more on Myers and his actions and accomplishments I hope that this review has been helpful, if you want to discuss anything, please don;t hesitate to drop me a line.
Reviewer:	--Sir Skinfan13 Talk {< CUN RotM FBotM VFH ΥΣΣ Maj. SK >} 01:10 EST 24 Feb, 2010 if you found this review helpful, I would love your vote for February Reviewer of the Month!