Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/UnNews:Phoenix Lander discovers ice on Mars

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UnNews:Phoenix Lander discovers ice on Mars

Wildcatherder 17:01, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

YesTimeToPee!
Woah, back off there, 'cause it's YesTimeToPee...for YTTE, not you. Sorry, you'll just have to go find somewhere else to empty your bladder, or you can choose to wet yourself. I got this spot, biatch.

After I've done Lj's review, I'd love to do this for you, however it'll probably mean I'll get around to it tomorrow, or The Day After Tomorrow. -

Sir FSt. Yettie (talk) (>>)

QotF BFF NotM RotM UNPotM CUN PEE SR UnProvise

[14:21 3 July]

Humour:	4	Section by section break down, as per normal... First Paragraph: Well this sort of confused me. It was quite a technical beginning, but seemed deadly serious to me - now this is often a good thing for humour articles (to sound serious but be completely the opposite). However here it seemed like the opening was intended to be serious. There didn't appear to be any jokes, whatsoever. "Ice Chunk Enabler (ICE) " and "This ice "disappeared" over a two day period " seemed to be the closest this opening paragraph got to jokes. The fact that disappeared was enclosed in speech marks made me assume that this was a joke - I'm not really sure, though. Your opening left me a bit confused - is this truly serious with no real jokes or have the jokes just flown well over my head? Second Paragraph: This paragraph seemed to me to be similar to the first. It seems, well, jokeless - to me, at least. The fact is you appear to reporting the truth; at least according to the sources you link. This is something frowned upon at UnNews. Misinformation and lies are more up UnNews Street (yes it's got it's own street). It really does seem not to fit in with the UnNews style - which is just my opinion. I don't want to be particularly harsh, maybe I'm missing something, but this is just a relatively normal-ish piece of news. Third Paragraph + Final Three Sentences: Again, your third paragraph seems deadly serious and is slightly confusing. I thought they'd already found ice? But it follows the other two paragraphs. As far as I can tell there appear to be no jokes and it's just continued normal news. There's no punch-line that could have saved the article, either. Finally: This left me confused. Is there some big joke that I'm missing - which I suppose is entirely possible - or this is a piece of journalism that would fit on WikiNews (or whatever it's currently called) a lot better. Have you read this or this? I think they may give you some help and pointers on what an UnNews is and how you can improve this article. One way I find useful for improving articles is attempting to slip normal jokes (you can find plenty on the net) into the article. This starts things off and then with a lot of work and bits of polish and shoe cleaner you can work the article into quite a good one. At the moment, however, this article seems destined for VFD - which, if you haven't heard of it yet, is "Votes For Deletion".
Concept:	4	Sorry for another really low score, but as far as I can see there's no real original idea here. You seem just to be copying off the sources you have linked from and providing an entirely factual - or almost entirely factual - news article (also two of your sources appear to have broken links). For your article to be a funny article that fits in with other Uncyclopedia pieces there should be an original or innovative idea. This could be a different way of looking at a topic, or an entirely new idea, or a seemly normal article with a big twist at the end. A funny article must have a good or at least decent concept in my opinion. Surely there's a way you could build a creative and new idea around your current topic?
Prose and formatting:	5	Well your formatting could do with a little bit of "touching up", and not in the sexual way. Your opening sentence isn't really formatted correctly (see this). It should have a bold opening word or two, at least. Really there should be a bold location and date to open the article. Also your sources are not formatted correctly and are kinda broken - you should see here for how they should be properly formatted. Here is an example of a properly formatted source. Staying on the formatting theme your UnNews is also completely lacking in links! UnNews articles need links in them, just like normal articles do. In the first sentence I can see one word that jumps out at you, desperately crying out to be a link: Mars. Also your use of bold to stress things is slightly odd - you should really use italics to stress things, especially in UnNews articles. On your prose: This could be cleaned up a bit, too. In places it's a bit messy for an UnNews article. UnNews is meant to be able to almost fool people into believing it to be a real news article. They should generally be written with good English, correct grammar and a rather formal, newsy tone. You've managed this, mostly, but occasionally you trip up. One area of grammar that lots of people trip up on has caught you out, too: tenses. For example in "The Phoenix lander has been continuing to find ice since shortly after it landed on Mars the 25th of May " this has a rather confusing effect on the reader. It sounds all wrong. Also the opening sentence ("The Phoenix Lander is still finding ice on Mars ") doesn't quite sound right for an UnNews article. It should be something more like "The Phoenix Lander, the American, un-manned shuttle that landed on Mars on the Xth of the X 2008, has continued to find ice today". See how this sounds a bit more newsy? It's still not a brilliant piece of writing, but it will do. Also I presumed the the Phoenix was American. Also also if you were to use an opening sentence similar to this you shouldn't say "Xth of the X 2008" and should instead use the real date it landed on Mars (this sounds obvious but some people would forget to do this). I also think it's a little bit on the short side, even for an UnNews and could do with another paragraph worth of text, at least. Those were just a few thoughts on your formatting and prose, here. I hoped that helped a bit. Both need to be cleaned up, I'm afraid - but that's normal for first articles. Frankly the prose is relatively good for a first UnNews, so well done there.
Images:	4	The one image you have is well - not very good. The caption isn't particularly creative and doesn't really make you laugh. Also the the picture isn't great, especially since you're looking at it at such a small size. At first it isn't clear exactly what it is, and when you check the caption and look again and realise it's ice you're still a bit confuddled. At the size of a thumbnail it's a bit hard to tell where the picture is and what's going on in the background. A better picture would be something simpler like this image or even just a picture of Mars or the shuttle, itself. Also you should focus on making the caption help the image to be really funny. Of course it's hard to work this out, before you've decided exactly where you want to take the article.
Miscellaneous:	4.3	An average of all your other scores.
Final Score:	21.3	Well this article doesn't really seem to belong on Uncyclopedia and seems to be factual. Just a warning (which I've already mentioned): you may find this article deleted (or huffed as we Uncyclopedians call it) pretty soon. There's no place for purely factual articles on Uncyclopedia. A very good and very useful guide on writing humour articles can be found here. That should really help if you decide to attempt to rewrite this piece or write another article. If you wish to continue this article in your userspace - a place where no one will delete it from - then you can go to the article and use the "move" tab at the top of the page to move this article to User:Wildcatherder/UnNews:Phoenix Lander discovers ice on Mars. There you can edit it at your own pace and admins won't intervene and delete it. I wish you luck with this article! Just one more time, here's a bit of light reading that may help you with this UnNews: UN:HTBFANJS HowTo:Tune_up_an_UnNews_article UnNews:About Help:How_to_write_an_UnNews_article (to a lesser extent) I hope this review has helped!
Reviewer:	- [16:36 6 July] Sir FSt Don Yettie

Wildcatherder says, I obviously have the wrong venue. Phoenix went to Mars to find signs of life, pre-launch big life-search coverage. So far, it's found ice. It's the only news from Mars, ice, ice, ice. Read in this way my article is a parody with "life" replaced by "ice". Now, if you don't know the difference between a lander and a shuttle, none of this has any meaning whatsoever. I do appreciate your making the effort to show me how to conform to Uncyclopedia standard. As a former engineer and as a former comedian, I have often written deadpan parody which was appreciated, mostly by college graduates. I think I should confine my efforts to things like the Journal of Irreproducible Results and the like.

Well, see the average Uncyclopedian isn't going to know the difference between a shuttle and a lander. That's not their fault, and you've got to recognise this. As it says somewhere (maybe here) there's no point making an article that only a select group of people will find funny. A parody where "life" is replaced by "ice"? It just seems to be reporting exactly the real news story. - [17:15 6 July] Sir FSt Don Yettie

Wilcatherder says, by the way, I did report the actual date of landing. The two "bad link" sources are made up, as one could tell if the text is read. The guide I read encouraged one to make up bogus links. As a rule, people who read UnNews would certainly have some interest in current events. Reworking old jokes is good idea if you haven't already seen and heard them 100s of times. A parody, by definition, is written in the style of parodied source. I did not just quote the sources in my references as you would have noticed if you had pursued them (they were chosen at random from 100s of Google hits). In fact the titles, were changed for humorous effect. I believe that you have applied standards for articles to a brief UnNews item. If Uncylcopedia is a place for gags, punchlines and non-sequiturs, I have, as you have kindly demonstrated, made a serious mistake in venue. Also, there seems to be no simple "comment" link , so I have no idea whether even a "select group" "got it" or not. Thank you for your help and time.

I have reviewed short UnNewses before, by the way...about 8, not including this one. I suggested implementing simple jokes as an easy way to start off a piece in a humorous way. From there you could grind them down and smooth them out to fit in. Uncyclopedia is a place for all times of humour, as long as more than just a select group of people find it funny. I don't know where you got the making up links thing, from. You should definitely not do this when quoting sources on UnNews. The sources are intended to help people understand the topic, if they hadn't come across it. And - to use your phrase - "by definition" a parody cannot be a parody if it is the same as the parodied source. It would be a parody if you replaced "ice" with "life". - [17:37 6 July] Sir FSt Don Yettie