Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/UnNews:Parents encourage drug experimentation over math homework

UnNews:Parents encourage drug experimentation over math homework

Tried my hand at my very own first non-crappy (I hope) UnNews. Don't bash me too badly. Please! :P -- Dame Viktoria - (Contribs) - (Talk) - (Block log) 17:35, 29 Oct

~~I've got this one~~. Unfortunately I have a very rare ailment known as spectrometriseitis, which means that I am unable to read anything written on a pink background, I hope there was nothing important up there. --ChiefjusticeDS 12:28, October 30, 2009 (UTC)

A polite suggestion, highlighting it turns it to blue on a white background, rendering it perfectly readable. -- Dame Viktoria

- (Contribs) - (Talk) - (Block log) 18:20, 31 Oct

I still want UU to review this thing, not some nitwit who... let's just not follow that line of thoughts. -- Dame Viktoria - (Contribs) - (Talk) - (Block log) 08:46, 5 Nov

And I know I promised to get to it at the weekend and failed. Shit, unfortunately, just got real. I'm snowed under at work like never before. I will do my living best to get to this in the next couple of days, but cannot, unfortunately, guarantee anything. --UU - natter

09:06, Nov 5

Oh, sorry who do you not want to review this? Probably somebody that won't see this, irrespective of how many UnNews articles they wrote. Wow, I wouldn't risk putting it out in the open like that. User:Hawthorn Peebles/sig 22:54, November 6, 2009 (UTC)

Put what exactly out in the open like what? You don't want to see a tantrum like last time, so please, keep your head out of this, Mr Guy-I-Haven't-Met-Before -- Dame Viktoria

- (Contribs) - (Talk) - (Block log) 23:00, 6 Nov

Don't worry, I still got this, I'm sure I can find time this weekend. --UU - natter

23:03, Nov 6

I think I'll be happy as long as the review's happened "by the end of next week", UU... ^_^ -- Dame Viktoria

- (Contribs) - (Talk) - (Block log) 22:41, 8 Nov

Here's a little framework to refresh your memory:

[10] Brilliant. No mistakes. (50 holy crap, I wet my pants!).
[9] Way above average: probably VFH (45)
[8] More than adequate: might be VFH (40)
[7] Adequate, the average article (35)
[6] Nearly adequate (30)
[5] Inadequate. Might be Rewrite. (25)
[4] Might be VFD/NRV/Rewrite (20)
[3] Probably VFD/NRV (15)
[2] Probably VFD/QVFD (10)
[1] Probably QVFD (5)
[0] Doesn't exist, no attempt. Reserved for the Iscore of articles without pictures ONLY.

So you're gonna go potty on my article?

“Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.”
~ Mary Poppins on telling you your article sucks

Hello, <insert name here>. You seem to have spotted my Pee Review request. Now, first, I'd like to make a few points absolutely clear. There are rules on how I think one should pee on my stuff. Why? Because a good review is not about the score as much as it is about making the author of the article know the article's weak points and it's strong points, and to get an idea where or how they could start improving on it, without them thinking you're a complete dick.

The Basics you should already know

The guidelines (which you have naturally read and re-read occasionally) are a good place to start considering where and how to start your review, however since you'll be giving scores, let me remind you of the scale. These articles are mostly worth [9]'s and [10]'s and have earned them already. If you think some part or feature of my article is up to par with them, give me an 8, 9 or 10 for it. Make sure to mention why you consider the feature in the article to be so great, high scores without comments for an article give nothing to the author to work with.

An average article you don't have anything exceptionally good or bad to say about is worth a [7]. This doesn't exclude some form of comment for the score. "Meh, I kinda liked it." is not a comment. Lower scores than that mean that there is something wrong with an article. A score of [6] or [5] probably earns it a {{rewrite}} tag. A score of [3], [2] or [1] means the article is genuine crap. If it isn't deleted yet, it may risk being deleted soon.

Then last but not least! As comes to [0]. If an article has no images, then it is kosher in the Iscore section. Elsewhere, it's a big no-no. Don't give a 0 for anything else, it's an insult to your intelligence.

Then for the stuff I'd like to emphasise

A coherent, well written comment is better than a random line of ridicule, such as "Whoa! I giggled." Reading the guidelines helps here, but it is strongly recommended to consider a few more things, such as complete sentences of over two words, and an attempt at coherent rhetoric. You could even benefit from this later on in life.

Have you ever considered this? How's your own writing reviewed? Can you honestly claim you've ever written anything feature-worthy? If your own articles get plastered with {{rewrite}} or {{fix}}, then how can you tell if the article you're reviewing is better than yours, or if it's worthy of nomination? You use that framework to form an idea of where on the scale an article lands. A poor reviewer thinking an article is funny does encourage the author to nominate an article for VFH, but if it gets bashed in the voting stage, the poor reviewer may have caused more damage to the author's self esteem than telling them honestly it's not really that good of an article in the first place.

Remember, some like poopey fart humour, others prefer high-brow satire and subtlety, or even outright absurd reasons for laughter (Just look at John Cleese & Co with their whole Monty Python thing...), so if you can't understand the joke, don't automatically bash it. Perhaps you would want to review another article in stead and leave this one to someone who has an idea of what the article's about..?

...or even a whole lot better...

...Make suggestions to the author on how to make the humour more accessible to your kind of audience.

Soften the blows

Behind every single article you see here, you have a living, breathing person. Someone may have poured a lot of energy, effort and emotions into their article. Which is why they might not be happy with finding themselves be insulted, their hard work bashed without any positive comments and the scores for the article being haphazardly thrown about. Even though they might agree on the total score, they might not agree on the why and where the scores are distributed.

The best way to deal these blows is to think of the author's emotional level as if they were an eight year old girl. They start crying, if you don't give them a spoonful of sugar with the medicine. If something sucks, try to balance it out with something good. It may take a while to figure this one out, but often, it only takes a couple of minutes, going to the fridge and having a sammich or a soda to get your blood sugar levels up from cranky bitch to pleasantly happy before you get back to it. Reviewing is an unpaid job, so don't overwork yourself while feeling cranky.

A big mug o' reviewin' strength tea? Why, that must mean this article
is being reviewed by:
UU - natter

(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).

OK, finally, here goes. --UU - natter 22:38, Nov 8

One thing though: despite your template up there, I have done a few reviews now and am also an old git, and am therefore somewhat set in my ways. I score 5 as average, always have, and always will. I'm set in my ways like that. Anything over a 5 from me is therefore to be seen as a good thing, and do not forget that. OK, here we go!

Just as a comment, those score samples are directly filched from the guidelines, so those don't exactly reflect my views, just the general opinion. A seven is an average on the Finnish 4 (fail) to 10 (excellent) grading scale, and it sort of sticks with me, but I think a 6 is roughly my idea of "average" in reviews and anything above that's great. Thanks for reviewing. -- Dame Viktoria

- (Contribs) - (Talk) - (Block log) 23:28, 8 Nov

Humour:	6.5	OK, here we go. This is a good subject to work with, and you've got some good ideas for a start. I think it needs a little work still, but it's well on the way, and it's pretty good as it stands. Here's the deal though: it's all quite serious in tone, and requires a little involvement to really get the best from it. That's fine, nothing wrong with that, but you need to hook people in a little - give 'em a couple of more throwaway, obvious, more "jokey" lines early one, or at least something they can chuckle at quite quickly off the bat, so they can think "hey, yeah, I'll give this some more attention" and they go on to get more out of the rest of it. My suggestion here would be to bring in those good old stereotypes a little - have a quote or two from a good ol' hippy or something, give the easy laugh while you work on the more satirical digs in the background. Also, perhaps undermine your narrator a little in the same way - you have statistics in the second section, which are always perfect for this purpose. "..with 9 in 10 (which is nearly 86%).."; "...ninety one percent (which is, like, four out of every seven)..." - that kind of thing, anyway. Basically, you have a good article, with plenty of potential, but with a little too much dryness at the moment. Your main argument - that parents who were dumb as anything are now jealous of being eclipsed by their offspring - is a good one, but I think you can work an absurd example in there of how this happens, instead of just explaining how it happens. Really paint a broad picture, and you'll find more laughs here. If you think I'm being a little vague here, it's because I can almost see how I'd write that bit, and I'm trying desperately not to tell you, because I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with it! If you want more ideas, you know where to find me, but I hope this gives you enough of a pointer as to where I think this article needs to go.
Concept:	8	The idea itself - that parents are afraid of homework, and would rather put their kids on drugs, is a really, really good one, and should lend itself to plenty of comedy. I want to see you do more with it - push for the real absurdity that this can bring. Parents who are so afraid of a simple quadratic equation they'd rather get little Jimmy hooked on Meth; parents who can't cope with calculating the length of various sides of a triangle, so they put their kids on acid and after half an hour ask the smart little bastard how many sides it has now, huh? That kind of thing. You have a really good idea here, with so much scope, and I like what you've got so far, but please, please, please, turn it up to 11, tease out the real ridiculousness of your idea, let it sing!
Prose and formatting:	7	No really major problems here, just a few run-on sentences. You do have a sentence or two that could probably be split down into more manageable chunks (this is something I am very guilty of when I'm not careful - you should see my emails!) This, for instance: "The study concluded that those blank years modern parents should have stayed sober and awake in college classes are finally coming back to haunt them." - It's a little tricky to follow, and could probably benefit from a slight re-structure, or a comma or so - such as: "The study concluded that modern parents may now be seeing their earlier failures - such as failing to stay sober (or even awake) in college - come back to haunt them". Same basic sentence, but possibly a little easier to follow. That's about it, though, spelling's fine, formatting is (naturally) fine, no real problems to speak of.
Images:	7	For the length of the article as it is, I actually think there's one too many here. But if you expand it a little, as I hope you will, then we should be fine. They are all appropriate and captioned well, and I particularly like the pills caption myself (but that's a preference thing).
Miscellaneous:	7.1	Averaged, because.
Final Score:	35.6	Rightyho, to sum up then: nice idea, you've spotted an interesting topic, and put a decent spin on it. As it stands, this is a pretty decent UnNews, and something to be pleased with. However, there is plenty of potential here for this thing to really fly - explore the absurdity inherent in your idea a little more, and you should be left with something a lot more chucklesome. I sincerely hope you do that, because I'd like to see it. And as always, remember that this is only my opinion, others are available (as you are aware!) And good luck!
Reviewer:	--UU - natter 23:18, Nov 8