Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Vanilla Ice

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Vanilla Ice[edit]

I did some work on the article, tried to put something funny in there, because the last version wasn't funny at all. Checkoutthehook 03:41, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

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is being reviewed by:
UU - natter UU Manhole.gif
(While you're welcome to review it as well, you might like to consider helping someone else instead).
(Also, if the review hasn't been finished within 24 hours of this tag appearing, feel free to remove it or clout UU athwart the ear'ole).

I got this. --UU - natter UU Manhole.gif 10:15, Nov 22

Humour: 2 Uh-oh, this isn't a good start, is it? First up, thanks for trying to help an article that needs a fix-up - which this definitely did. Problem is, while you're right that the old version wasn't funny at all, you haven't added that much to it in terms of humour. Let's take a look at some of the problems:

Starting point. As you say, the old version was no good. I'd have suggested the best approach to a rewrite here was to ignore what was already there and start again. You chose to work with what you had, which arguably handicapped you from the start. Random. The key problem here is that it doesn't hang together. The article covers him being president a couple of times, without mentioning why, or how. It's just thrown in, randomly. Then there's the over-used meme Chick Norris dropped in for no reason, a completely random bit about taking over from Maury (how? why?), something about a math career... None of this makes sense. Now, humour comes from the absurd, sure enough, but it still has to hang together. There has to be some coherence to the absurdity, and here there's very little. Explain what's going on, and if it sounds like it follows on, then it can be as absurd as you like. Concept. Hang on, there's another box for this.

Concept: 2 You don't really have one, which is your problem. There are a couple of ideas in there, thrown in apparently at random (there's that word again), but they're not explained, they don't fit together, and the article is a bit of a mess.

Take a step back, and come up with a central concept for your article. Are you just going to parody his actual career? (In which case, a look at articles like Megadeth and Buster Keaton - which keep to the biographical style very well, and still manage to be funny). Or are you going to put him in a fictional context that bears little resemblance to his actual life (in which case, you need to play up the contrast between his image and the image you're trying to portray him with. Or you could take a different approach again, see Martina Hingis for a different slant on the "article about a famous person" idea.

A strong central concept is key to a good article - if you have one, you often find a lot of the article writes itself. So it helps to have one to start with.

Prose and formatting: 4 Well, there are no typos, and most of the formatting is OK (although the "here are some of their albums" bit doesn't work as it is - start a line away from the edge of the page, you get that dotted surround bit, and it doesn't look good).

However, the fact that it doesn't hang together or feel consistent is what lets it down here - some of the sentences feel so disconnected from each other, they may as well be from different articles. Your prose has to flow from section to section, linking together smoothly.

Images: 4 3 images, which is a minimum for an article of this length. But they're not well spaced out - there's too much of a gap between the first and second ones. And only the first one is really relevant.
Miscellaneous: 3 Averaged.
Final Score: 15 OK, that's not a great score, is it? I think you were hamstrung by your starting point, and the essence of my advice to you is: start again. Detonate this whole thing, come up with a brand new, coherent central concept and start from scratch. A read of the articles I've linked to might help, as would a look through HTBFANJS - a lot of our best authors still use that, it can often give good ideas.

There's plenty of potential for a decent Vanilla Ice article - he's an absurd enough figure as it is. So I hope you give it a go and see what happens. Just remember that this is only my opinion - others are available. And good luck!

Reviewer: --UU - natter UU Manhole.gif 11:04, Nov 22