Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/UnNews:VHS sales soar due to consumer confusion
UnNews:VHS sales soar due to consumer confusion[edit source]
Well, I'm breaking my moratorium on getting UnNews' reviewed (or reviewing them for that matter). I feel I haven't quite gotten everything I could out of this. Any ideas? –—Hv (talk) 27/12 21:28
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Hi there! This big ol' grin must mean this article is being reviewed by: • • • Necropaxx (T) {~} (While you're welcome to review it as well, you might like to consider GOING AWAY and REVIEWING SOMETHING ELSE). (Also, if the review hasn't been finished within 24 hours of this tag appearing at 02:12, 31 December 2008 (UTC) feel free to remove it and give Necropaxx a swift kick up the butt for being such a loser). |
| Humour: | 6.5 | This article has potential, make no mistake. However, I feel it gets bogged down by two of an article's worst nemeses: random humor and lack of clarity. In the first paragraph, you very nicely tell us the extent of VHS sales, along with insulting the people who bought them. This is good. Don't change this. In the second paragraph and following quote, however, you veer away from "teh funny." The reason for this happening, you say, is that Blu-Ray and DVD are cancelling out each other, leaving the door open for VHS. All right, I'll buy that. But when you introduce the lady analyst, you write: "The one we talked to, who did not wish to be named for fear of being branded a heretic by the Luddite government, said...". OK, what? What is the Luddite gov't, and why would they brand the analyst a heretic. This is random, random I say, but is easily fixed. Un-anonymize her. Just give her a name, and eliminate the Luddite gov't reference. So, it would be: "Suzie Q (or whoever), the analyst we spoke to, said...". See?
OK, moving on. After the first quote, you inject an off-the-record comment that blames laziness for "global warming, the failure of the school system and Labour's stay in power." This sentence is fine, but needs help. First, you referred to laziness as "this same flaw." This confusilates. Also, not all of Uncyc's users are British (yours truly included), and many would not understand the joke about the Labour Party. Instead, I would reccommend replacing that with another social disease, like AIDS or radical Islam or something. Now everyone "gets" it. Let's keep going. The next quote/paragraph is good, and doesn't need any big aid, but everything after that is... not as good. OK, so you say that the elderly are the big reason for tape sales. That's fine. But the individual case where you talk to the knitting grandma is out of place and random to boot. You wrote: "as one wise resident told us while buying a copy of The Dark Knight at the local HMV, are extremely relieved to finally have something new to put on in the background while knitting. She said: 'All the Small Soldiers-related hatwear possible has been made by me at some point. This Dark Knight should give me some impressive options for after-hours themed blouses, like the crescent moon top I've been promising my grandson for years!'" Again, what? What is "Small Soldiers"? What's up with the "crescent moon top" the granny's been promising her grandson? What does The Dark Knight have anything to do with either of those two things? What is the HMV? All these questions occur from these few sentences, and are not answered in the rest of the article. To fix these problems, I would change the old lady quote. I would keep the knitting reference, but make it clearer that the granny was buying a VHS to aid her knitting. I would definitely leave out the "after-hours blouse" bit. |
| Concept: | 8 | Well, this is original, I will give you that, and it does grab my attention. However, I feel that, like you said earlier, you haven't quite gotten everything you can out of this. The first big idea that came to me when reading this is a joke about Beta sales also rising with VHS. ... That's all my brain is picking up a relates to new concepts to put in. |
| Prose and formatting: | 7 | The article is not hard to read, and flows...decently, but there is a measure of confusion about the thing. On formatting, I feel you have just a bit too many paragraph breaks. To fix this very slight problem, you should combine
"The anonymous analyst later said off the record that this same flaw accounted for global warming, the failure of the school system and Labour's stay in power. She went on to say..." <------ these ---^ into just one paragraph. That's it. That's my issue on formatting. Gosh, I'm anal. |
| Images: | 7 | There's only one image, and I have a few issues with it. Now, I know that this is an UnNews, and there isn't really that much space, but I feel that you could add another image while shrinking the first one. Now, about the first image. I couldn't really tell that the picture was of a VHS store, maybe you could find another picture, one that doesn't look like it's in... a subway station? Sorry, but the pillars only confusilate me. However, I do like the caption. You definitely want to keep that. Now, about the possible second image, some ideas for you I'm throwing around are that you might have a picture of an old person (buying the VHS), or a stack of VHSs, or an exploded VCR. Again, the second picture is not necessary, but if you keep it formatted nice, it may significantly help the article's humo(u)r. |
| Miscellaneous: | 7.1 | Avg'd. |
| Final Score: | 35.6 | This article could be quite funny with some extra content and also cleaning up the random humor. |
| Reviewer: | • • • Necropaxx (T) {~} 03:02, Dec 31 | |