Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/KDE
KDE[edit]
I can't even stand looking at this thing, so maybe if someone else would point out what's going wrong, I could look to that, and it'd be less painful.
Well, assuming the thing as a whole is even... er, is there a concept here, and is it funny? And would it mean anything to folks who don't know what KDE even is? o_O ~ 
*shifty eyes* (talk) (stalk) -- 20101028 - 22:33 (UTC)
~ 
18:01, 27 December 2010
| Humour: | 7 | Ok, what you have here so far actually isn't bad. In fact most of it's pretty good. There are a couple of things I would probably take a look at before you go any further with it though. In terms of humour, the only thing you've really got going on is the joke that KDE ties up all the system's resources. While this doesn't sound so hilarious on it's own, but you do get some great laughs out of it. What I would suggest (and this is going to be quite a general comment) is that if you can get any other kind of joke in there, it would really help, as right now it seems a bit one-dimensional. Like I said, the running joke about it being all-engulfing isn't bad, in fact it is quite a good satire, it could just do with a little something extra. Mainly because luddites like myself don't really get all the technical stuff (I explained this on Al's talk page). Is there anything else funny about it? More comparisons to Windows might be good, as even guys like me and Al are quite familiar with that. How is it better? How is it worse? You already go into this but you never know, there might be more humour in there somewhere. If there are other features you could talk about, you should do so, because I liked these sections. Who are the key people involved and is there anything funny about them? Has there been any famous cases of KDE being used or failing on a large scale? Like, are there any big businesses that use it or anything like that? You're the expert here, is there anything else funny about it at all?
The reason I'm so bent on you getting more jokes in there is because I didn't really enjoy the big war thing, and think you should probably remove as much of it as possible. It was all a bit humourless and not even that interesting to tell you the truth. I think you could easily get the whole rivalry summed up and done with in a paragraph or two, instead of dedicating the largest part of the article to it. So what I would advise here is that you trim it down to your favourite jokes and have that as the whole war section (some of the jokes I liked were the one about them being able to copy each other's ideas because they're both free, and the fact that GNOME were actually just trying to be the best, not the biggest). Naturally this is going to shorten the article somewhat, which is the main reason I think you need a few more jokes in there. Perhaps just one more running gag that works throughout the whole article, alongside the "bloatware" one. Anyway, they're my general thoughts, let's just look at a few other things I thought could have worked better. These are just examples of nitpicking on my part really. To start with; the opening quote. It's not really that funny, especially before you've read the article, and even then it's just making the same joke as the rest of it. I suggest you try to rework it into some other format, perhaps an image or banner kind of thing, because the line itself is quite funny, I just don't think it works as a quote. This might just be me, I tend to discriminate against opening quotes. To me, they're not encyclopaedic, and just seem a really cheap way of squeezing a joke in, when most of the time it would probably be funnier to just write the same joke somewhere in the prose. I'll leave it with you anyway, I trust your judgement. Another little gripe I had with the intro was the part where you say "no one knows who started this practice [of naming things with the same letter]". There are two issues really. First of all, I don't think the rivalry should really be the focus. You can talk about it, of course, but to mention it in the intro seems over the top. This is an article about KDE after, not the "war". The weird thing is, this section could easily play out as a joke that I remember seeing in the original article but that now seems to have been removed. It was the joke about the K not standing for anything. Did you delete this, or did I dream it? Or is it still there and I am somehow missing it every time? In any case, I liked the joke, it gave the reader a good idea of kind of people who were working behind the scenes on this, and it was funny. I think this is more relevant to the paragraph than the joke about the "strained relationship", and it's funnier too. And like I said, the two can switch around so easily, you can just say "no one knows what the K stands for, and the people at KDE deny rumours that it doesn't actually stand for anything." Or something to that effect, at least. Again, it's up to you. And finally for humour I just want to have a look at some of your footnotes. Footnotes can be a tricky thing to pull off, and generally speaking should only be used if you have a really awesome joke that would otherwise spoil the flow or is too much of a digression from the subject matter. Otherwise you should probably just put them in the main text or don't have them at all. Yours fall into two groups. In my opinion, footnotes 1 and 4 are rather funny, and would probably be better off if you just moved them to the place the corresponding little number is in the prose. They're wasted down there, especially in an article that could do with a few more laughs (a lot of readers don't even bother looking at them, you know). The rest, in my opinion, are trimmable, but if there are any that are really close to your heart then you'd also be ok to keep them. None of them are bad, and they don't ruin the article or anything. Whatever you choose to do, I definitely think you should lose some and move 1 and 4 up, so have a think about it. |
| Concept: | 7 | I've pretty much said everything regarding concept already. It's another of those articles where humour and concept are difficult to separate. The key things to remember here are that you might just need a little bit more than the whole "bloatware" thing. I do really like the dry, realistic approach you've got here (everything you say seems to be pretty much the truth) so obviously try to keep to that. To recap what I say above; trim the extraneous parts like the stuff about the war, and develop the better parts, like the features of KDE and it's style/appearance. As for your question on whether there is a concept; I guess there is. However you've taken the truthful approach, which often means the concept isn't as easily defined as an article where you're being more satirical. The good thing is, a "blank" concept like this tends to be able to generate a lot of material, although I suppose it depends on how much information there is available on the subject. The Wikipedia article looks pretty long so I guess this one could be too, even with my proposed trimming. |
| Prose and formatting: | 10 | I always look forward to the prose section when I'm reviewing your articles, as there's never really anything for me to say. It's all excellent as far as I can tell. You do a good job of making it look nice too. In fact, this might look even better with a reskin in the style of KDE itself (although I don't know, maybe that's taking it too far, and might be a lot of work for something that probably isn't going to add anything in terms of comic value). That's the problem when there's nothing to say, I start rambling and making suggestions just for the sake of it. |
| Images: | 7 | Again, you do a good job here. My only issue is that the first desktop one is a tad too small to actually see all the details (even though the thumb itself is quite big). Maybe you could increase the size even more and dedicate a large section of the article's space to it? So long as it doesn't ruin the lovely formatting. I really like how the only images are actually of KDE, and that you haven't gone for the usual images of people using KDE or all the annoying GIFs that tend to accompany articles like this. It really helps its appearance, even if the images aren't laugh out loud funny. |
| Miscellaneous: | 7 | KDE. |
| Final Score: | 38 | Sorry you had to wait so long for that, I think the problem might have been that you're the only person working the pee queue who actually understands this technical stuff. But overall it's a nice piece of writing that could just do with one or two more laughs here and there (although removing some of the less interesting bits would probably have the same effect. Brevity is so very important you know). Anyway, wherever you ultimately take this I hope my review helps. You know where to find me if you have any other questions/thank yous/death threats. |
| Reviewer: | --Black Flamingo 01:57, December 28, 2010 (UTC) | |