User talk:Monika/pls11

The one with the chicks

Ummmm, this is just a brief UnNews article. You can't really beat anything to death unless it's completely done start to finish. All my work went into "college DJ", there were only two days left to enter the PLS and you didn't have squat to review in this category - so yes, it was thrown together quickly. The images stay large so that young boys may gawk leeringly at the hot looking girls playing football. The intent of the chops was never to make someone believe the pictures were real - It's intentionally cartoonish. If you look at the kickoff picture, you'll notice that there is no shadow for the cat. There's no shadow left of the actual football that used to be there either. Stadium lighting focused on the ball leaves no shadow. Speaking of American football, I'm under the impression that you're not a fan - you'd get a lot of the jokes and would understand the humor of the player responses. We hear drilled, penetration, etc from announcers during every football game. Also: "we don't need no balls round' here". Do you think that was meant to be the King's English or perhaps the heavy slang of a female African-American player? Oops, you missed that one too. Look, this isn't Economic Collapse Barbie™ - a best illustrated PLS entry from the past. It's just a quick, goofy romp. Basically, there's absolutely nothing being changed in this article, it is what it is.....--    05:38, October 12, 2011 (UTC)

Wow, defensive.

It's far too long to use the "brief UnNews article" excuse, especially considering that my complaint was that it was too long for the joke, and that's not a complaint I often have.

> yes, it was thrown together quickly.

Yes, that was my point. It was obviously thrown together quickly and therefore it's not going to be your best work and therefore there are going to be negative comments in the review that you could either take to heart and use when fleshing out this article when not on a deadline, or get pissy and defensive about. It's a reason, not an excuse. You don't get a pass on sloppy work because it was done quickly, but you do get sympathy.

>It's intentionally cartoonish

Totally an excuse to not do a good job. And if you'd done realistic shops of women playing football with animals, no one would have gotten it and been like "Those are supposed to be photoshoped images and you clearly used real images because I can't see the pixels." Really.

>the King's English

The King's English in this case would have been "around". If someone says "don't", but they're talking colloquially, you don't quote them as saying "dont", you say "don't" because it's a contraction. "'round" is a contraction of "around".

>understand the humor of the player responses

See here, "player responses" would have made sense. "players' responses" would have made sense. That's not what you wrote. I'm proofreading here and you're complaining that I don't like football.

--monika 05:51, October 12, 2011 (UTC)

Unbelievable, you're putting words in my mouth now? On the PLS judging page?Yes, the extremely minor grammatical errors were fixed. Your suggestion to shrink the photos and change the objection platform of NOW will indeed be ignored. Every facet of the article has one purpose - to set up a double entendre. The article is, in effect, a contest for inserting as much double entendre as possible. Personally, if I could have fit in another beaver or pussy joke, I would have - but THAT would have been overkill. Your suggestion for the NOW objection does not yield very fertile grounds for another joke, it would just be following the script of a real article.

I will admit one thing. I misunderstood your criticism of "players responses" as being far more than just a grammatical issue. Why? Because I would never use that kind of language or imply that level of disgust over it - I would simply mention it and not act like my 7th grade English teacher over it. I actually thought that you meant the entire section was crap. I happen to find your entire "we don't need no balls 'round here" criticism way overboard. It's the location of one apostrophe........that's all. So, essentially, you never really touched on the fine points of the article and how it could be improved - you simply went grammar Nazi and pecked at the photos for not being VFP worthy. (IMO) The Best Illustrated category is mainly about how the images compliment, enhance or drive the humor but that concept has taken a back seat BIG TIME this year. Basically, that false representation of my criticism of your PLS judging of my article ON MY SCORE is absolutely ridiculous. I'm finding it interesting how you decided to make such initial commentary, THEN encourage talk page interaction between you and the participants, THEN score - and use commentary from these interactions in the scoring.

OK, you have standards. So do I. Can you take a wild guess as to where I feel you've fallen short here. --    04:49, October 13, 2011 (UTC)

Do you mind if I take a wild guess on where you've fallen short here? You're being an oafish prick and think that anyone who disagrees with you is wrong and stupid, and should be informed of it in the most immediate and straight-forward way. I've observed this behavior in you before and I'm quite frankly growing tired of it. Being a good writer and a regular doesn't exempt you from the "Don't Be A Dick" rule. -RAHB 04:58, October 13, 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the "anyone who disagrees is wrong and stupid" part - I can see how you might perceive that though. If you look closely at my last VFH rant and this one here, you'll see that I'm not saying someone is "wrong" - I'm being pissy about the feedback quality. I do take full responsibility for being a heart-on-his sleeve kind of guy who should really keep his yapper shut and roll with waves - but just can't seem to at times. That's me. However, you'll note that I do follow that advice quite often - just less than most people. Do you think I have a problem with your PLS judging? No. Seemed honest to me. You found the concept a little worked and derivative. No argument - totally acceptable IMO and you will find no rants about it.--    05:17, October 13, 2011 (UTC)

That's all well and good, and perhaps as I tend to do when I try to step up and say something, the "everybody who disagrees is wrong" thing was maybe more than necessary. I'd just like to see less "you don't get it" when somebody doesn't find something funny. It's always entirely possible that it either really isn't funny (I haven't read your entry in this category so I can't make that judgment right out), or that the person just isn't into that sort of humor. And while that may suck, we all have the same situation to deal with. People criticize my articles all the time for being too random or rambly, which is the very point that I write them, but it's hardly prudent of me to go accusing them of some grand conspiracy against humor. We all have the same advantages and disadvantages to work with. As far as I can see, this isn't a case of singling out, and so if Monika's judging were deficient in any way (I personally don't think it was, but we'll each have our own view on it), then the other contestants would be suffering from the same deficiency. -RAHB 05:26, October 13, 2011 (UTC)

I'm well aware that I have a problem with "mainstream validation" with what I write. I think the top 10 lists speak for themselves. I had zero anticipation of "winning" here in this category. Zero. The article is nothing but a sexist, adolescent tome littered with sex jokes. It's also semi-limited to people who have a decent level of NFL knowledge. Target audience, young males. It has its shortcomings. It doesn't really seem like those issues were addressed. Yeah, I hear you about the conspiratorial edge to my choice of words - I just happen to know that everyone is out to get me. Waiting in the Uncyclopidia hallways with their sharpened pens and rigid, swatting rulers. They mean to destroy me!--    05:49, October 13, 2011 (UTC)

Well, the top ten lists do in fact speak for themselves. Going by those it would seem any writer with a functioning brain stem has trouble with mainstream validation. And maybe they do, I dunno. You have got 25 features and are the only double-WOTM, though. -RAHB 06:16, October 13, 2011 (UTC)

Hell, I understand the mainstreaming issue. I once took dead last in this very category with an article about Rob Halford not having sex with Bob Dylan. --monika 06:20, October 13, 2011 (UTC)

The thing is, I want this to be an open discussion (and I'm annoyed at myself that it took me so long to do the original reviews to give us all time for this discussion before the ranking was due) because the entire point of this entire website is to help people become better humor writers. Anyway, I do see now that the small changes were made. They didn't show up in my watchlist because of the order of the editing and moving - I only saw the move and your original comment that nothing was going to be changed. Sorry about that.

> Your suggestion to shrink the photos and change the objection platform of NOW will indeed be ignored.
Ah. So you are saying spite is a reason you would ignore a suggestion.

> I misunderstood your criticism of "players responses" as being far more than just a grammatical issue.
Sorry; the details section is the copyedit section. I'll make that clearer next time.

> I happen to find your entire "we don't need no balls 'round here" criticism way overboard.
Which part? I'm assuming you mean the part I wrote before you responded, because that, like, would be the only part that isn't a response to your response.

Anyway, the first part was explaining ahead of time that if it was intended as a joke about round balls, that I got it so you wouldn't need to tell me I didn't get it. The second explained the fix. Was it snarky? Possibly. Was it inappropriately snarky? Sorry I didn't break out my kids' gloves. (I still can't find them...)

>So, essentially, you never really touched on the fine points of the article and how it could be improved - you simply went grammar Nazi and pecked at the photos for not being VFP worthy.

I quote myself:

There are plenty of things you could do or could do better. Many of them are in the article you cite. One thing that it looks like you started to do but then gave up on was having the NOW bitches bitch about things that aren’t actually sexist when there are plenty of sexist things to actually complain about. One thing you didn’t even touch on is the part in the cited article about the girls who are doing this complaining that this is the only venue where they can play football and if they had any other options, they’d choose something less sexist. That is a perfectly good excuse to get your misogyny on and write about that.

That's two solid actionable suggestions.

Also, if you enter something in the illustrated category, the images are something that you are de facto consenting to be judged by. If you had entered it elsewhere and I was still judging it, I would have said the same thing and meant it as advice for improving the article, which I've already mentioned is why I believe we're here.

> I'm finding it interesting how you decided to make such initial commentary, THEN encourage talk page interaction between you and the participants, THEN score - and use commentary from these interactions in the scoring.

When I participate in PLS, I get annoyed by judges who don't comment. I also get annoyed by judges who do comment and don't address things that I would have liked them to address, or who do comment and say things that I would like to defend the article against. That is one of the two reasons that I did it that way; I was trying to be the PLS judge that I wish I'd have had.

The second reason is that, as I've said repeatedly, PLS:Illustrated is too fast and every single article was rushed and not one article was polished, even the two that were ostensibly finished. Given that, I was forced to judge the articles based on their future potential. I would have preferred to judge them on how good the images were and how much they helped the article and how good the article was, but I had nothing to go on. You claimed that your article was in its final state and I didn't get it because I don't watch football, and then you brought up that you had won this category before. The other contestants said, to different extents, that they were going to fix the articles up when they had the time. The "future potential" component of your score was driven by your statement that you were not going to change anything about the article.

Also, before you say that I can't grade these based on future potential alone, I didn't. It made up a very small part of the score. However, every article scored fairly low on all other criteria (because they were all admittedly (by the authors even) rushed) in every other more important category, which artificially inflated the potential score's influence.

>Your suggestion for the NOW objection does not yield very fertile grounds for another joke, it would just be following the script of a real article.

Well, only if you're not good at writing that joke. Plenty of people have written jokes (and, separately, real articles) about how PETA thinks owning pets is slavery, but they are okay with euthanizing a shitton of animals they rescue from said slavery. This would be the same sort of thing for NOW - it is a legitimate criticism of NOW and something that is easy to mock. That's how topical-type jokes work. You take a real problem and mock it.

By the way, if you think I'm being especially harsh on your article because I don't like football or some other reason, you didn't read my other reviews, or if you did, you didn't read them and yours in a neutral frame of mind.

As an aside, I have a similar problem in real life. People will often ask me what I think of, say, a band we just caught live, and I'll say "It was awesome!" and then a whole bunch of things wrong with it, and whoever asked me will be like "Don't be so hard on them. It wasn't that bad..."

If I missed anything that you want to discuss, let me know. I'm already not planning to sleep tonight. --monika 06:03, October 13, 2011 (UTC)

November VFH entry

(Continued from here)

It's called the KISS principle. Intentionally simple, not an in depth look at the LFL or women's issues, just a setup for dirty jokes (that would be irony) and your suggestions strayed from that simplicity.--    14:45, November 15, 2011 (UTC)

I realize I only said this in the longer explanation I erased, but I'll say it again, for the first time. You haven't even proofread the article. I pointed out some errors and you fixed some of them, but I wasn't actively proofreading so I didn't catch everything. --monika 14:49, November 15, 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this article has been proofread by me with the same level I give to everything I write. If you have spotted another error that I have missed, simply fixit. That's what I usually do for other authors - sans Uzbeki beki beki stan stan which was a chore. Also, please discontinue putting words in my mouth (yet again)--    14:57, November 15, 2011 (UTC)

The one with the drugs

I'd just like to point out that your judgment of my article is pretty much spot on. Also I'd like to point out that I know almost nothing about Timothy Leary except that he recorded an album with the German Krautrock band Ash Ra Tempel in the 70's, so I learned something today. Which is always cool. -RAHB 06:15, October 12, 2011 (UTC)

Curious how you came up with the idea then. It's a good start. I know some people don't like to bother, but a little research never hurts an article. If you want me to review it again when it's finished, hit me up. --monika 06:19, October 12, 2011 (UTC)

Eh, I came up with the Psychedelic Bed & Breakfast idea and I was listening to said Ash Ra Tempel album at said time, so Timothy Leary's name seemed proper to put onto it. I may scrap the Leary thing altogether and just go ahead with the concept of the place itself, since it's really just meant to be a silly article about a silly place. At any rate I'll probably wind up modifying it greatly after the entries are unlocked, so yeah, I may take you up on that review offer. -RAHB 06:34, October 12, 2011 (UTC)

Oh, keep it. It has a lot of potential and it really grounds the article, especially if you keep the history straight. --monika 06:38, October 12, 2011 (UTC)

Ah, very good. I'll do that then. Thanks :) -RAHB 06:53, October 12, 2011 (UTC)

The one with the fruits

Just a quick thanks for the effort you put into judging these. You're brutal, yet honest, which I can appreciate. Harsh truth's are more valuable than false praise I suppose. Admittedly, I rushed this and didn't put as much effort into it as I would have liked but, mehhhhhhh. I'll do it later. I understand and I wish to continue. . 07:09, October 12, 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome. I honestly think the PLS needs to be lengthened; two weeks is very short especially for the illustrated category. I would be interested in knowing what you're thinking of doing with this article when you get more time. --monika 18:41, October 12, 2011 (UTC)