Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Roemenie (Revisited)
Roemenie [edit source]
I'm waiting for a proofread to be done, but in the meanwhile I'd like to see if the article has improved and if anyone has anymore suggestions. Eventually, I'm going to nominate this on VFH. It's originally a translation from this article, in case you're interested.
16:00, July 25, 2010 (UTC)
- Guess I'll review this and possibly give it a proofread/syntactical rewriting at the same time. Doesn't look like the author is coming back, but maybe someone else'll be able to use this thing for content-wise fix-uppery.
- Eh, hour and a day, give or take a time zone and possibly a daylight savings time and perhaps some dead raccoons. ~
*shifty eyes* (talk) (stalk) -- 20100914 - 04:32 (UTC)
| Humour: | 7 | It still needs more funny. It looks like it's probably an improvement from before, but it's still a good yak-throw from great. It does have a fair amount, after all, but it also loses a fair amount of potential in the syntax. (Get someone competent to proofread and rewrite, perhaps? And by competent, I mean more than me. Because I failed. *points to the prose section*)
Basically, develop further jokes, go even more into the transportation stuff, reorder, add some truly ridiculous details, say about the counts' lives, about the politics, the histories, ect. The overall idea of vampires and wars and that tram work well, after all. The bits about how many wars each started were good, but what about more on that? How? Why exactly for each? Did they have different styles in their war-causing? The tram coming in after years of having to literally carry their countess and the reaction to that was just golden, but instead of just repeating it in a later section, which makes the whole joke less effective, specifics and expansion on the matter might make it even funnier. Even the thing with the Wattman shows potential. I have no idea what it's trying to be, but there must be something to it. It's clearly related to Batman, as the name and symbol show up, so making this relation clear and integrating it subtley throughout might make for a lovely ahah moment for readers. Unless this has already been done and I entirely missed it, of course, but if so, this could be a sign that it's too subtle. Anyway, other stuff that the last fellow brought up still applies. |
| Concept: | 7 | Ah, a count Anyhow, the modern vampireness is a well-played concept, but what I and the other fellow mentioned in other sections serves to undermine it a mite. |
| Prose and formatting: | 5 | I was trying to proofread/make this more readable, but I gave up about halfway through. So I may have messed things up missing points and may also be somewhat biased, for which I apologise.
But a major problem here does seem to be orders of things. While I tried to fix this in the first half (and didn't entirely succeed there, either), it only seems to get worse in the second (which may have something to do with why I gave up). But it's not just sentences in strange word orders; though common throughout this, that's easy enough to resolve. The issue lies with sections as wholes - several are essentially just repeats of parts of previous sections, for instance most of the economy section appears to be a reiteration with slightly more detail of Morticia's tram attempt and subsequent issues, yet strangely without mentioning her at all. And since the most of the history of Romania is covered in the Counts' sections, the thing really may as well have all of the history there, or a section devoted entirely to history. Having the thing broken up into sections which each have their own histories seems to make the article as a whole a lot choppier as well as much more open to being merely repetitive as the histories overlap. That's not to say it couldn't work, of course, but the overlap would have to be rather more precise and the amounts and depths of history spread out much more evenly. The international relations also looks like it would do better like that, especially as the last Count has almost nothing to his name. It's somewhat lop-sided. And even within the sections themselves, the order in which the information is presented could be improved. As is, a section on a topic may start out on one aspect of a topic, go to another, and then back to the first. This is pretty common the way people's minds work (I know I do it all the time and probably have several times already in this), following digressions after getting some idea and then coming back to the point later, but it does not make for a well-ordered article and makes the points harder to follow. Take for example the transportation: it first mentions the means of transportation, then delves into the ministry, then returns to the means, then goes into the mascot, evidently related to the ministry. An order such as ministy -> mascot -> means would probably work better, or even means -> ministry -> mascot or means -> mascot -> ministry using the mascot as a transition to the ministry proper. Or something. Something else that might help would be to use footnotes, mind. Pull out the digressions entirely and just link to them at the end.
But that aside, what follows as the article proper introduction only really leads into the first section. Some foreshadowing to the rest of it, which almost feels tacked on, would not go amiss. The conclusion, on the other hand, is more a matter of what conclusion? While the tourism section probably could be made to tie up the article rather smoothly, it just turns into a list and ends. Even as not the end it would probably need more, but if it had something relating to perceptions, impact, the future, some sort of big thing or whatnot, it would probably conclude the whole article quite well - big stuff does that. Makes for good conclusions. Usually. Unless it's a dead whale, at any rate. For that matter, throughout the thing, there is some rather odd italicising. I tried to keep it and to it, but I'm not entirely sure what its purpose is... something to consider, perhaps. And the infobox is wonky. Not sure why... And of course, I never did finish proofreading, so it still needs that (and it probably would need another pass even if I had finished). But I left the template, so someone may or may not come by eventually anyhow. |
| Images: | 6 | Is that the batman symbol? Is it? It looks like the batman symbol... I thought it was a coincidence at first, yet there appears to be one and only be one mention tying to a batman of sorts in the entire thing... so it could really be better integrated. If the Wattman is the Watt mentioned previously, then I incorrectly took it for James Watt, the Scottish inventor, when trying to fix the fluency, but even looking at this more closely now I'm not sure what is going on there. Whatever the case, some clarity would help.
Anyways, I digress. This is the picture section, so about the pictures... the stamps certainly make for a nice, clean way to present the Counts. Look rather nice, and the rest of the images work fairly well as well. Some are perhaps a bit too big (I resized some of them in the first half), so going for consistency in the rest and possibly those too would probably help. The problem is, they're not actually funny, for the most part. The stamps have some amusing depictions, and the poster is silly enough to resemble all manner of reality, but the captions are downright boring. They need something, something more than literal explanations of what they are. Even if the explanation is of something funny, the explanation may as well be funny as well. Make jokes and whatnot with them. |
| Miscellaneous: | 6 | This number seems to sum up some of this article. |
| Final Score: | 31 | So, apparently I'm disagreeing with some of the stuff from the previous review, but I blame seeing the implementations of what what mentioned in the previous review apparently not working as well as intended. I could also be horribly wrong, and I probably am about at least some of this.
And I'm also agreeing with some of it, for that matter. Double emphasis, I guess. And other stuff. Apologies for thoughts winding up in the wrong sections, but my computer is trying to eat my foot and I just don't care anymore and why is it eating my foot? Anyway, hopefully this review will be of use to someone, say the writer guy who ported it... if he ever comes back, which he really should. Or just some random passer-by if he doesn't... either way. Hopefully it helps someone - this article has too much in it already that for it to just stop here would be a right shame. |
| Reviewer: | ~  *shifty eyes* (talk) (stalk) -- 20100915 - 05:20 (UTC)
| |