Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Why?:College is for suckers! (revised again)
Why?:College is for suckers! [edit source]
Improved and expanded yet again. Sure hope this article is worthy of Featured Article.
64.88.4.2 12:38, March 16, 2011 (UTC)
- Will have this done within 24 hours.
(talk) 03:03, March 17, 2011 (UTC)
| Humour: | 3 | I tend to have a habit of not reviewing the humor of the actual article in this section. It appears I won't be able to do much of that in this review either.
The first thing I want to tell you to do is reread both of the reviews that you already have on this article. They're here (#1) and here(#2), and, honestly, I could just copy and paste what is in the two reviews already as they are both good, in-depth reviews. Lryithya and Shabidoo took quite a bit of time reading your article and determining what you should fix, then wrote it down for you to read, then you read it (I'm assuming) and seem to have completely ignored it. In fact here's a line from Shabidoo's review "...this article definately has potential, it just needs three important things, TIME TIME TIME etc... and by that I mean, thiking about the concept, thinking about the structure and thinking about the images..." See what he said there? Time. In fact he said it three times to show how important it was. Shabidoo did this review about a day ago. That's not a lot of time that you've given it before you determined that you had followed all of his instructions. The advice that you do seem to have taken from these reviews you've just copied into the article without adding your own "spin" to the lines. For example: Shabidoo recommends adding a line about skipping class and maxing out your parents' credit card. You tacked this sentence almost word for word into the middle of a sentence you already had without changing the way the sentence reads. This isn't what reviews are for. Reviews are meant to inspire you to come up with your own lines instead of choosing one the reviewer makes up and adding it in (unless it's really good.) I doubt many people review the jokes that they write in their reviews (I know I don't) as they don't expect them to actually show up in the article. If you can't think of anything better than what comes up in the review then at least rewrite the sentence to incorporate the line you add better, as right now it reads like you just threw two sentences together. I didn't mention Lyrithya's review because you don't seem to have considered her review at all. Reread her review again. Just about everything she mentions I want to say in this review, and I probably will anyway. The next thing you should do is reread HTBFANJS. This is one of the best things you can do when writing an article. HTBFANJS lists a lot of ways to do humor that you've probably seen in other articles (and you have some of them in this article, though poorly done.) I try to read HTBFANJS (known as ":that:" here on out) every so often just to make sure that I haven't lost what it taught me when I last read it (and I usually find out I've been doing something wrong since then.) One of the things that shows up in :that: is that randomly large numbers aren't very funny, which is something you seem to use a lot. Everyone knows college tuition is high, stating that it is insanely high isn't as funny as saying something along the lines of "This could be as high as the insanely expensive $49." This still isn't very funny, but it misdirects the reader as they are expecting a large number, which is funnier than giving them what they expect. One of the things you say in this article is that there are classes on taking guitar hero. This is the best part of the article right now as it's fairly ridiculous, true (at least partially), and is a good point for pointing out why college is for suckers. More lines and sections along the line of this are what I expected from the title (and yes, I know that I just said don't give people what they expect, but :that: also states that an article should have at least something to do with it's subject.) Other than those two things I can't really say much more as a lot of the humor is derived from the concept, which I will talk about next. |
| Concept: | 5 | Right now your concept isn't very consistent. You start off with a conspiracy to get people to get people into dead end jobs in the intro. Then you talk about how colleges are just trying to get money from people and not actually teach them anything. This second part conflicts with your first because in the intro you state that no one learns anything because they just party while in college instead of learning, then you say that no one learns anything because the professors teach things that don't exist. After this, you make this into an ad for a book (one that actually exists, tsk tsk) which doesn't necessarily conflict with your concepts from before, but doesn't fit with the execution of the article. Particularly you claim that there is no better choice than going to college. If there isn't a better choice than going to college why would we buy the book that you're trying to sell? The rest of the article doesn't seem to fit this concept either as it's written to a very specific audience (white 18 year-old males who have everything paid for by their parents and also are probably nerds.) One of the main things that you have to consider is the first section in :that: which says you have to keep the bigger picture in mind. This article definitely needs a bigger picture.
One thing I want to bring up is Lyrithya's review once again. In her concept section she makes a lot of very good points about your article in the 3rd paragraph which starts "Thing is..." Make sure you read this part of her review again and think about the things that she brings up. These are all things that I would say in this section of the review if she hadn't already said everything I want to say. Well everything except this: your execution could use a lot of work. You don't seem to have an idea of what any of the sentences are going to say when you start them. This is big deal as it tells the reader that you didn't have an idea for the article before you started writing. People can sense this when reading your article and it makes everything awkward to read. |
| Prose and formatting: | 4 | I have qualms with both your formatting and your prose. First I'll do the formatting.
The format of this article is really odd, especially if you're going for an encyclopedic style for this article. Typically the only words that will be in bold are if you have the title of the article in the article (which you do.) Boldening words that you want to draw attention to doesn't work very well as it also distracts people from the rest of the article. It also lets people know when you're about to do a joke as almost all of your bold words are parts of jokes. Right now you don't have very many line breaks. Line breaks can not only make your article look longer, but they also make the article look nicer. I would recommend reading other Why? articles in order to get a good idea of how to format your article. This one in particular has very good formatting. Other articles to read can be found here. For the prose I'm going to go back to Lyrithya's review. "I'm not sure if the bad spelling/grammar is supposed to be part of the joke or not, but unfortunately, either way, it doesn't really work for me, just makes it harder to read. You can imply uneducatedness without bad spelling and grammar or whatnot." She also mentions that your "Conclusion" section should be relabeled so that it reads as something other than what it actually is. I say get rid of the section all together unless you decide to make the entire article about selling the book to parents that are looking to pay for their kids' college education. I've already addressed the flow in previous sections, but I'd like to reiterate the fact that many of your sentences sound like they're just two sentences merged together. Make sure to iron these sentences out. You also have a lot of misspellings in this article which should be fixed, as Lyrithya said. |
| Images: | 7 | Your images are pretty good in this article. One thing I have to say is what Lyrithya already said: These images are really small, they need to be a lot bigger. You also have a lot of them at the bottom of the article, spread them out more within the article. Your first image of the clown is a good image and you have a pretty good caption to go with it. In the caption you have the word "medical" rather than "medicine" which should be changed. Other than that this image is good and is in a good spot. The second pic is also good, but it's small as the majority of the pictures are. The third pic is not only small, but already has text associated with it. Not only that, but some of the text is misspelled. You also say that this is the journey of "every" college student. This obviously isn't true for everyone as the character is male. I would recommend just getting rid of this pic as it doesn't really add anything to the article that you don't say already. The fourth pic of the college students is also a good image as it shows what you're warning about. The caption is a little long though as funnier captions usually get better responses unless absolutely necessary. I'd recommend something shorter like "How typical students "study."" The last picture, of the book, is not funny, it's just hacking a book that the narrator wants us to buy. I'd get rid of this unless you change the entire article to fit the advertisement theme. |
| Miscellaneous: | 5 | Overall "feel" of the article. |
| Final Score: | 24 | This article still needs quite a bit of work. Please heed the other reviews (and this one) before submitting it again. |
| Reviewer: |  (talk)
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