Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/User:Alternate*grammar/Jonesology
User:Alternate*grammar/Jonesology[edit source]
It's my signature. END. 15:37, August 2, 2011 (UTC)
| Humour: | 6 | Hey there, Mr Grammar, pleased to meet you. Hope you stick around and enjoy the site!
This article has a lot of good ideas, but right now I can't help but feel like it's still very much a first draft. With a lot of the jokes I can see what you're trying to do, but for various reasons they fall flat. It's nothing to worry about; you've probably never written an article for a comedy wiki before (especially one as high quality as this) and no one gets it right first time (you should see some of the awful, awful things I wrote). Overall the article feels like you haven't put much thought into it. One of the traps a lot of new users fall into is putting every single joke they can think of into an article, regardless of whether they fit with the concept as a whole or even work as jokes on their own. This includes things like opening quotes and silly parenthesis jokes (putting a silly observation or punchline in brackets). They're too easy and don't have enough of a flow or preamble to really be funny. You need to take more time on your writing. It has to be written well for the jokes to work. For instance, in the opening quotes you come up with the idea of dying in the name of "His Jonesiness". Not particularly funny as a one-liner, but if you put some more work into it, say, a sentence or two of good prose, and it could be much better. There could be a section about the mass suicide that ends by saying something like "but they were not afraid because they were dying in the name of His Jonesiness". This is just a totally random example from your article, but if you take this kind of care with all your text your article will end up being much better. Your humour is also way too random at times. Random humour can be hilarious when it's done right, but it's very hard to adapt it to written comedy, especially encyclopaedic stuff like this. There are too many needless references to things like Abe Lincoln, and dildo suicides. I would advise you get rid of anything that has nothing to do with Jim Jones. Being random and silly is just confusing and tiresome. In fact, that is one of the key arguments of our writing guidelines, which you should probably at least glance at sometime if you haven't already. Instead, try to make satirical jokes about your subject. For instance, saying "the Harry Potter story is far-fetched in many ways, for example, a ginger kid has two friends" is much funnier than saying "Harry Potter was written on a slice of cheese by Darth Vader in 1164 BC". See what I mean there? What kind of jokes can you make about this Jim Jones guy in the same vein? It's not all bad though, there are some jokes in here that have well-crafted punch lines. I liked the one that said: "the remaining 0.1% was him". Lol. |
| Concept: | 5 | The biggest problem here is that you don't have an angle; it's like you just threw every single idea you could think of into a big overflowing pot. There are a couple of angles you could consider. Popular choices are writing in the style of the subject, like this one. Or pretending the subject is something that is isn't, like this one. Or you can just go for the standard approach, writing about the subject honestly, like this one. All great articles, and I recommend you read them if you haven't already. Have a look through our supposed best of too, that might help you develop some better ideas.
Another issue is that whacky cult jokes aren't a particularly interesting or new idea. They're cheap and easy to write. What is interesting to write about here? What hasn't been done before? Don't just resort to accusing him of things he didn't do, like the Madrid bombing either, it doesn't make sense. Making stuff up rarely works because it's unbelievable (unless that's the joke). You could just as easily have said he stole Christmas from Whoville and it wouldn't be any more or less funny. Stay away from jokes like this, they could be about anyone or anything, and if they have no grounding in reality they will just baffle the reader rather than amuse them. |
| Prose and formatting: | 6 | Well, if I had to say there was an issue with your prose it would be that it's scruffy, messy, unprofessional-looking and lacking in authority. Try to be more subtle and concise. Clarity is important too. Don't go overboard with cursing, exclamations, parentheses and all-caps, and don't break the fourth wall for no reason (like where you suddenly say "alright, alright, fine. Geez". There is also the odd spelling/grammar error so give it a thorough proofread. I would also recommend getting a browser with a spellchecker (or using MS Word) if you're not totally confident in your abilities.
The tone is pretty inconsistent too. I don't you've really thought about who is narrating this. A lot of it is just a bunch of insults. Crudity can be really funny, see Chicks, but in that article it makes sense. There's a clear idea of who the narrator is. Have a think about this and come back to me. |
| Images: | 0 | None. Get some. |
| Miscellaneous: | 5 | Overall feel. |
| Final Score: | 22 | So overall some really good work and a decent first article. You just need to spend some more time tweaking and developing it. Get some images in there, they're really important in making an article look pretty, as well as adding a dimension of visual humour. And trim as much of the randomness as you can. Apart from that, good work. If there's anything I've said here that you want me to explain better, or if you want my opinion on anything I might have missed, or even if you're just lonely, please let me know on my talky page and I'll try to help. Keep up the good work and I hope the review is ok. |
| Reviewer: | --Black Flamingo 12:50, September 17, 2011 (UTC) | |