Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/lower case 2

Main

Current

Reviewed

Archive

Guidelines

FAQ

Committee

RotM

User:Airhogs777/Lower case

I have already had a pee review [1] for this article with a score of 13, and have made the changes advised to me. I just want to see if anyone thinks it's ready yet for the mainspace. I did try to get at least a little bit of all the categories in, but I don't know if I'm being HTBFANJS.

PEE REVIEW IN PROGRESS Hyperbole is engaged in the dual processes of giving you his opinion and pretending you care.

Humour:	1	To briefly answer your question: No. This is not ready for mainspace. If it were put into mainspace, it would be ICU'ed or VFD'ed, and deleted. The reason is that, unfortunately, it is not funny. Let's take it piece-by-piece and find out why. Quote: Obligatory Oscar Wilde quotes are... no fun at all. Wilde doesn't say how he's been tricked by lowercase letters, or why lowercase letters are tricky. There's no association between Wilde and lowercase letters. So these are just - random words, really. The quote could have been "I enjoy using lowercase letters," and it would be no more or less funny. There's got to be *something* to a quote. There are all kinds of techniques you could have used here - blatant obviousness clearly unbefitting of Wilde ("lowercase letters aren't uppercase!"); mild irony ("I ONLY TYPE IN LOWERCASE LETTERS"); pointless obscenity clearly unbefitting of Wilde ("fuck lowercase letters."); something that actually resembles a Wilde quote ("this morning, i changed every letter in this sentence to uppercase. this afternoon, i changed them back.") None of those examples are hilarious, but they are all better than what you have, which tells no joke at all. But, more to the point: you don't have to have an Oscar Wilde quote in your article. If you can't think of a funny Oscar Wilde joke - don't put in an Oscar Wilde quote! Simple as that. Lede: Here's where I already know that your article is a failure. The lowercase character set was invented by Oprah Winfrey and is used by the IRS, which was founded by Robin Williams. Why Oprah Winfrey? Why Robin Williams? What does the IRS have to do with anything? Here's a little trick I use to apprise whether an article fails HTBFANJS. If I take all the proper nouns and replace them with the phrase "my penis," does the article become funnier or less funny? Let's find out? "it was created by my penis and is mainly used by members of a group of irs agents founded by my penis. this use has terrorized the inhabitants of my penis for generations." I hate to say it, but I think that's actually an improvement. If "my penis" can improve an article, the article was terrible to begin with. Sorry. (Note: Please do not talk about your penis in this article. While an improvement, that sentence is still terrible and delete-worthy.) Look, for an article to be funny, the article almost always has to have some relation to its subject. Actually, when I look through the article history, it seems you've taken out the only sentence that was even mildly amusing: "the lower case, in english and other latainian languages, is an alternate set of letters for when one gets tired of writing with the caps lock on." See, there's a joke there. The joke is that the author thinks that people enjoy TYPING IN ALL CAPS, and that lower case exists to give them a little break from it. It's not the funniest joke in the world, but my brain is capable of identifying it as a joke, which makes the corners of my mouth curl slightly upwards. This is called a "weak grin." But "it was created by oprah winfrey and is mainly used by members of a group of irs agents founded by robin williams" - my brain cannot recognize that as a joke. It's just a bunch of patent nonsense that makes me wish we were talking about penises instead. Usage: Well, first you repeat the unfunny assertion that lowercase letters are used by IRS agents. Jokes get less funny when you repeat them, but non-jokes get progressively more infuriating when you repeat them. Then you tell me that lowercase has been used for calligraphic purposes. I guess that's a joke, in that lowercase is highly unsuitable for calligraphy. So... that's something you could use. But when you throw it into a bunch of shit about the IRS, it loses any humor that it could have had. If you were talking about calligraphers since the beginning, I might buy this as a legitimate article. But you're not. You're talking about Oprah Winfrey, Robin Williams, and the IRS. History/1590s: So, here, we reiterate that Oprah Winfrey invented lowercase. Except, now Oprah Winfrey is a 16th Century pilgrim. Why?? That doesn't hold together at all. And why are you giving me a very specific date?? Why the hell would I laugh at the date "January 27th, 1952"? In a good article, ever single *word* is important. Every single word needs to be part of the setup for a punchline, or part of a punchline. Pointless extraneous details are neither, and thus they need to be drug out and shot. History/1630s: Okay, now this literally angered me. I saw the link "lower-case taxing," and I thought, "A-ha! This article makes no sense, but maybe it will make sense if I read that article." So I clicked, and it didn't work. So I refreshed my browser. It still didn't work. So I checked the code - and - oh, you've given me a fake link. This is about the equivalent of going to Barnes and Noble, buying a novel, and reading page 1: "The flibberhoppen was grolling on the grisly grenawald. By the way, this will all make sense if you turn to page 42." So you turn to page 42, and the whole page is smeared with dog shit. That is how I felt about your article when I ran across that fake link. That you weren't merely sucking as a writer, but that you had actually maliciously smeared shit all over my book. That fake link took my mood from "This guy needs some help" to "This guy needs a headbutt." But... I'm here to help you, not to headbutt you. So, helpful advice: remove the fake link. Moving on. modern times: I'm immediately told that nothing has changed since the previous section, which of course, means there's no point for this section to exist. Awesome! And then we've got cults, and the UK, and New Hampshire, and tax loopholes, and... basically, we have a word salad. Hmm. Well, that's not funny. online lower-case taxing: Again, this starts off by reiterating that nothing has changed for generations. And then it says that everything you just talked about before was taken online. And then it says that in order to tax people online, IRS agents have to hack PayPal. Well, the first bit is supremely unfunny because it's totally unremarkable: yes, things that have been the same for generations have recently moved online. The second bit is supremely unfunny because it's senseless and random (what relation between hacking PayPal and taxation have to anything in the real world??) see also: just random links. Okay, so here's what I can identify as humor in your article: 1. That lowercase type doesn't make good calligraphy. That is such a dreadful payoff that there is no reason for anyone in their right mind to read this.
Concept:	1	Every article needs a concept. And, 99% of the time, the concept should be to tweak something in the real world so it becomes funny. Watch some SNL sketches, and you'll see that they almost all do this. "What if a game show host refused to let his guests talk?" "What if someone robbed a bank but was too shy to speak loudly enough for people to hear?" "What if a famous record producer was bizarrely obsessed with the cowbell?" What you don't see in SNL is a game show host refusing to let his guets talk, and then an Oprah impersonator walks on the stage and announces that she invented the show, and then a Robin Williams impersonator walks on the stage and announces that he's from the IRS. And the reason you don't see it is that it breaks the concept. The concept is the joke, and everything that happens on the stage has to support the joke. If you don't support the joke, but instead introduce random nonsense, you ruin the joke. It's the same thing with articles. So, what's your concept here? What's your "What if"? "What if the Universe was a totally different place where Oprah Winfrey was a pilgrim and Robin Williams was in the IRS and that had something to do with lowercase letters?" Nope. If that even does describe your concept - and I don't think it does - it's not any good. Articles start with an idea, not with a title. You need an idea about lower case letters to get started.
Prose and formatting:	5	Your prose isn't too terrible. Your sentences are concise and readable, even if they ultimately don't make sense. Putting the article entirely in lowercase letters was a little obvious, but it works. The last picture is kind of hanging off the bottom. The Table of Contents creates a very large amount of whitespace at the top because the lede is so short. So, this one's a mixed bag. The article isn't ridiculously ugly, but it could use some prettying.
Images:	3	I personally think three pictures are too many for an article of this length. The picture of the lowercase character set is a good one to establish the article, and the caption is slightly amusing in its obviousness, so that's good. The cover of Flubber - ugh. That has nothing at all to do with the article, except that Robin Williams is there, but even though Robin Williams is in the article, *he* doesn't have anything to do with the article. And then the caption tries to explain why the cover to Flubber is ridiculously force-fitted into the article. That's worse than unfunny; that's annoying. Lose that picture. The final picture is of an envelope that says "taxes." That's a competent illustration of the article, I guess, but since the idea of lowercase taxation is never explained and doesn't make any sense, the picture can't really enhance the humor of something that wasn't humorous to begin with.
Miscellaneous:	1	Uno.
Final Score:	11	I don't think this article is fixable. And the reason it isn't fixable is that you have no idea what you want to write. Let's face it: you don't have anything funny to say about lowercase letters. There's no idea behind this article at all. You can ramble on about random celebrities being born during various centuries for pages, but this will never get any funnier. So, what you should really do is chalk this one up to a practice article. And then come up with a funny way to make fun of something. As you go through your life, think "Wouldn't it be absurd if, in this situation..." as often as you can. Before you know it, you'll have an idea for an article. And then start with *that*. We're a lot less worried about whether you've mastered WikiML and whether you can make a page look pretty and whether there are an appropriate number of pictures and links in your article, than we are with whether you can tell a joke. If you tell us some really funny jokes, we'll make your article look awesome. I promise. So... yeah. Let this one go, and start fresh with something new. Best of luck to you!
Reviewer:	pillow talk 00:35, January 21, 2011 (UTC)