Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/UnNews:Hobo Flips Off Oscar Wilde

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UnNews:Hobo Flips Off Oscar Wilde

69.244.129.141 23:24, September 2, 2010 (UTC)

I'm not going to go through a review for this, as it would be a complete waste of time. It is an article built upon an in-joke that has gone so stale it stinks. It is poorly written, has very little humour attached to it, and is a poor concept. Any improvements made to it would take it from a VFD on sight and move it to simply a sub-par article.

What I will say though is that every writer that is here who has been here for a while has written an article or two like this in their time. What I would suggest is leave this article alone, and start work on another one - I would create a user-space and do it in there, so that there's no chance of deletion, and start again. Think about a topic that you are passionate about. Maybe you are an avid fan of model trains, or an appreciator of the fine art of collage making, or maybe you have a penchant for prostitutes who are into scatology. Whatever it is, inherit in everything that is in the human realm there is an element of humour that you would know about and have the ability to cover. Being a hobo and understanding the wit of Oscar Wilde are likely to be two things that are outside of your sphere - you can go there eventually, but start closer to home and then move out.

By the way, I don't want to read about prostitutes and scatology. Just need to make that clear.                                • Puppy's talk page • 00:40, June 5, 2009 Friday, 00:06, Sep 3 2010 UTC

I'll review it, even if its a "waste of time". I'm trying to crank through a shit ton of quality reviews so that when PEE week starts I will be ready to kick ass. Plus I need a total of 5 in-depth reviews to join the PEE committee, and this should put me up to number 4. -- Soldat Teh PWNerator (pwnt!) 22:18, Sep 8

Waste of time would be if I were to review it, as to be honest I gave all the feedback on this that I could give. Not saying that it's a waste of time for it to be reviewed.                                • Puppy's talk page • 00:40, June 5, 2009 Thursday, 11:24, Sep 9 2010 UTC

So i should copy paste ur stuff into the table and be made a winner! also, i had a recent trip to urgent care (by recent I mean today) so if anyone else wants it they can have it, but if nobody does this will be my next one, eventually. -- Soldat Teh PWNerator (pwnt!) 00:06, Sep 10

Concept:	4	I would have to agree with Puppy's overview of the article. But before I go through what was wrong, you did do a few things right: 1. The formatting is more or less correct I do see a few spelling errors, but overall, the formatting is correct. There are no red links and your paragraphs are the proper size. The amount of bolding and linking is correct. Having Oscar Wilde's quote is all caps may have been overdoing it a bit, but the use of only 1 exclamation point keeps it within reason. I'm not sure why the quote is formatted that way, are you unaware of the {{Q}} template and its usage? Or did you want the quote to look different? I think it does look a little better, or atleast less cliche than the regular quote template, but other users might disagree. 2. You stayed on topic Overall, you stayed on topic. The article is about its title, and you avoided unrelated shoe-horning jokes into your article. Granted, the choice of subject matter wasn't good, but I'll discuss that later. 3. You used limited name-dropping The use of Oscar Wilde is quite cliche. As in Paris Hilton. However, the name-dropping was rather limited compared to some articles. Mentioning famous people is generally cliche. I'm not saying you can't mention celebrities: rather don't go out of your way to shove the names of famous people into your articles. 4. You generally avoided vulgarity as a substitute for humor Your borderline on this one. Generally, don't rely on cursing, pr0n, bodily functions, or mansex as a substitute for humor. It is possible to be funny and vulgar, but don't mistake the presence of vulgarity for humor. Now for what needs work: 1. Avoid Extreme Anachronism Anachronism often comes across as stupid and not funny. Anachronism is funny when it parodies something, when it is basically "random" it comes across as stupid. Oscar Wilde has been dead for 110 years, so we wouldn't be in any contemporary situation. Also, I don't "see anything of Oscar Wilde's personality" in the article. By that, I mean, if you replaced Oscar Wilde with a random celebrity, the article would not make any less sense. In fact, if you replaced Oscar Wilde's name with that a contemporary celebrity who has anger management issues, the article would actually improve. 2. The Concept is not that funny The only thing that has much humor potential is the last sentence. Even then, its sort of off-topic-ish of the article. When you write an article, as yourself if it has humor potential. For UnNews, you can generally get away with one main idea, mainspace articles would generally need about 3 or 4. Its possible to write an article arround one idea, but difficult. Also, getting back to what I mentioned above, how is Oscar Wilde's reaction really different than any other random celebrity? Even if his personality came through, Wilde is so cliche that it wouldn't be funny. In other words, if you wrote an article about Chuck Norris roundhouse kicking the hobo, or Mr T smiting the hobo with pity, it would still be cliche to the point that it is not funny. 3. Avoid meta-humor Meta-humor generally is not funny. And to make it work, you generally need a high level of familiarity with the wiki. If you insist on doing meta-humor, try to parody silly things that happen on the site. Writing a generic example of a bad article is generally a bad idea: its been done before several times. 4. Don't write articles about Oscar Wilde There actually isn't much funny about Oscar Wilde. He said a few witty things, was arrested for gaymansex, and that is about it. Most of what is worth covering has already been covered in the article about him. Likewise, try to avoid other cliche celebrities, unless your parodying actual news. 5. Default to an Encyclopedic Tone There are exceptions, mainly "in-the-style-of" articles where you are parodying how a particular person would write an article. (1st person articles are also an exception) For "in-the-style-of" articles, see Queen Elizabeth I or Yaoi Fangirl. Otherwise, it should generally have an Encyclopedia tone. By Encyclopedic tone, I mean a semi-formal sounding, somewhat deadpan delivery.
Prose and Formatting:	6	I don't see any major formatting issues, but you have the following issues: 1. Mispelled words Firefox has an automatic spell checker. If you use another browser, try copying pasting into a word processor with spell check. If you don't have a good word processing program, Open Office can be downloaded for free, but it may be resource heavy, especially on older laptops. Your misspelling of "Wednesday" in the header stuck out especially strong. Starting out with a misspelled word or misspellings in the title can really ruin the feel of an article. Also, never misspell a word unless you are doing it intentionally for humor. As a general rule, if the reader can't tell from the context that a misspelling is intentional, you probably shouldn't do it. 2. Image going past the text Images that go below the text look bad. Generally, you can fix that with filler at the bottom. In articles, "see also" links will work. In unNews, references can help break up the white space. Also, when using references, please link to actual articles somewhere.
Images:	4	I would drop the image of Hilton for several reasons. First off, I dislike nude images. Many people access this site from work, and images of nipples in random articles can cause issues with management. Second, its a cliche celebrity image. Sometimes those can be funny, but more often, they come across as cliche. If an image is used on several pages, it is more likely to be seen as cliche. Third, you already have an image of the hobo. Since Paris Hilton does not look like that Hobo, you contradict yourself. Self-contradiction rarely "works", and when it does, it is normally in 1st person articles. I think the image of the hoho is enough. If you were to insist on adding a 2nd image, I would suggest a image of Oscar Wilde pissed off, or possibly a mob attacking a hobo.
Humour:	3	Being funny is heavily dependent on delivery. However, you also need the base material to have humor potential. To be funny, you need to clever. It is possible to be clever in your refusal to be clever, but that is as a rule harder than being clever. Overall, this article gives the general feeling of "what's the point?" There appear many failed jokes in the article, this may be more to a lack of potential than bad delivery. For example "LAKE OF FIRE" - Is Oscar Wilde in hell in the article? Granted he probably is in real life, but there are some continuity issues with the rest of the article. The fact that he is in hell doesn't show up anywhere else "Normally, this wouldn't be such a big deal since every single hobo allways flips their middle fingers at Oscar for being a pompus douchebag," - calling Oscar Wilde a douchebag isn't that funny. He doesn't have a reputation for dickery. Even if he did, blatant insults don't work as a rule. "He has hunted down people from boys and men to men and boys, queers and jews to jews and queers, and whores and prostitudes to prostitudes and whores." - this appears to be a reference to Oscar Wilde's lechery. This statement just isn't funny, its too repetitive, inserted at random, and the reader doesn't "really get"
Improvability Score:	2	I don't think this article can be improved much. You could work on the tone, expand it, remove the meta-humor, inject some references to Oscar Wilde's personality, fix the formatting, and the like. However, the humor potential is still too low, and it still won't be very funny. I would suggest working on other articles. I would suggest working on a mainspace article. Most unNews is time-sensitive, so you can't really work on it over long periods of time. Also the quality control for unNews is much lower than mainspace, so you may be getting bad signals as to what meets our quality standards if you focus on unNews.
Final Score:	19	Try working on something else
Reviewer:	--Mn-z 04:14, September 26, 2010 (UTC)

Also, if you want feedback, please see my talk page. This page is on my watchlist, but so are literally over 9000 other pages, and it may be lost in the list. --Mn-z 04:15, September 26, 2010 (UTC)