Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Bob the sperm
Bob the sperm[edit]
A 7 month old article; one of my earlier works. Revisited and slightly revamped. • • 
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• 14:40, December 8, 2009 (UTC)
I'm in here now. --ChiefjusticeDS 22:21, December 10, 2009 (UTC)
- I'll have to push this over 24 hours, work has asked for me at short notice so I will likely get to this at some point on Saturday. My apologies. --ChiefjusticeDS 19:55, December 11, 2009 (UTC)
- No problem, man, take your time. SIRE FREDDMOOSHA
AMUSE ME 20:03, December 11, 2009 (UTC)
- No problem, man, take your time. SIRE FREDDMOOSHA
- FINALLY!!! Let's put on our reviewing pants and get this done. --ChiefjusticeDS 21:35, December 12, 2009 (UTC)
| Humour: | 3 | OK, it is obvious to see that you have put some effort into the creation of this article and I think you have a very promising idea here, but have, unfortunately, chosen the wrong style for the article. The first thing I noticed as I was reading through was that while you have written some reasonable stuff it is tarnished by an excess of nonsense, I think that nonsense is absolutely fine in some cases but becomes tired too quickly in others, your article for instance. I would recommend familiarising yourself, or re familiarising yourself with HTBFANJS not because you cannot write, but because it is an excellent resource and should be used. Back on the nonsense I felt that while some was reasonable it quickly spirals out of control and begins to look untidy. For example "Bob's lineage goes through diploid spermatogonia, daughter spermatogonia, primary spermatocytes, haploid secondary spermatocytes, and finally, baby Bob, a spermatid." While the non-sequiturs go a reasonable distance towards making this more humorous it still lost more favour from me than it gained. My advice would be to go back and rework the early sections, use HTBFANJS and your own judgement to work at the sections where nonsense is most prevalent. I would recommend you try to stick more to being more realistic, I realise that we aren't working with facts here, but rather than saying "Bob was lifting weights, doing push-ups, exercising, studying the map of the female reproductive system or playing heavy metal with his band Vaginal Invasion in his parents' tubule." try something like "Bob was less interested in simply swimming around all the time and more interested in advanced swimming around all the time and the purpose of swimming around all the time" While what I have written there may not be the zenith of comedy I hope it is sufficient to get the point across, nonsense is rarely as amusing as more believable stuff.
My other point is that you could do with checking to make sure all your jokes make sense, I noted some inconsistencies in the jokes you do make throughout the article, this is a very common problem especially when an article is written over a long period of time. The crux of the matter is that I see exactly what you are doing in all these cases, but the impact that the joke would otherwise have is significantly lessened by the fact the reader can pick holes in them. This may seem a small point but its effect is large, remember that a large number of people will read your article, and just as a well placed science joke will amuse those who know the science more, so will an error upset them more, it is up to you to make sure your jokes are all valid. For example "while other sperm cells spent their entire lives just swimming about in semen" Semen is the name given to ejaculate which is sperm combined with seminal fluid. The other I noticed was that in the service in the military section you suggest, through a non-sequitur that the sperm are in the vagina, but they aren't because you then say that there is a condom in use instead, try to clear small problems like this up, they hurt an article more than they should. The final problem I recommend you have a look at are your jokes, again HTBFANJS is an excellent resource for this. You are very overt with your jokes and I found myself longing for some subtlety beyond the non-sequiturs. Rather than throwing the punchline at the reader try to be more subtle and leave the reader to make the final leap in a joke themselves. While your jokes are by no means bad, they become tired and overused as the article goes on and a change in pace and tone would make it far easier to get through, beyond that you may want to expand a few of the sections to make adding and taking jokes much easier. |
| Concept: | 4 | Your concept, as I said before, is good and definitely not the topic at issue here. What you need to work on is the tone, in my personal opinion, I think the article would have been served far better by you using the first person rather than the third person. Since you are telling a story, I think this would suit the article better. If you do fancy exploring this option further, take a look at this article and this one, as they use the same style. If you are happy with the article as it is then take a look back at the article and make sure that there are no tonal inconsistencies, as I recall there were a couple. It may be to your advantage to write in the first person, as you could easily conjure up an explanation for errors and inconsistencies. You should also remember that the tone of image captions should match that of the article, so just be aware of them should you change anything drastically. |
| Prose and formatting: | 5 | As with the rest of the article, you are very much on your way with this but not there yet. The first thing you should do is make sure you proofread correctly, I rabbit on about this a fair amount but it is important, boring for some, but still important. If you are one of the people who doesn't enjoy proofreading, you don't think you will do a good job of it or you just cannot be bothered then you can just ask for help from UN:PS. There are a couple of errors that I noticed on my first read through but nothing too major. Your image formatting is the only other concern, the images very much squeeze the text in and feel less like items to compliment the text but rather that they are jostling for prime position with the text, consider spreading them out, resizing and possibly removing one as they are making the article look untidy. |
| Images: | 6 | You have plenty of images, and the captions aren't too bad. However the image of the sperm is pretty poor and I'm confident that you can find a better one on the internet. I realise that searching Google images for sperm throws up some extreme results so I would suggest blatantly stealing images from wikipedia. The other marks here come off for poor formatting which effects the enjoyment of the images slightly. Otherwise there is comparatively little work to do here. |
| Miscellaneous: | 4 | My overall grade of the article. |
| Final Score: | 22 | Right, I realise that there is an awful lot of criticism to take in here, but I would urge you not to be discouraged and to keep working at the article. Remember that there are lots of other opinions out there and that you should make your article the best that you feel it can be, only take my advice if you think it will make your article better, and by all means ask someone else, I let the better half have a look at it and she found it relatively amusing, though you did start her off on a long rant about flagellums and mitochondria. Essentially I thought your article was OK, not brilliant but definitely holding the potential to be so. Take your time making any further changes and don't be afraid to ask for help if you need it. If you have any questions, comments or requests for me then leave them on my talk page and I will be happy to help out. Good luck making any improvements. |
| Reviewer: | --ChiefjusticeDS 23:36, December 12, 2009 (UTC) | |
