03/22/2003
This is a review of deceptions.org. (Her own domain!)
Before I begin the actual review, I'd like to take a few seconds for cheerful banter. You called me an idiot on your latest entry. *giggle*.. whee. Sigh. (It's actually sort of hurtful. That it's hurtful is funny. What's this? I can't take criticism? No wonder I've never gotten my own diary reviewed. Sure, I may say that I just think other review sites are daft, but I suppose you all know the truth...) But really. How silly of you. (In your defense, you weren't certain that I was going to do the review, but here it is! Surprise!)
Comment: Regarding this little tiff, you said - "I'm sure to get a low score". Now. I'm writing this BEFORE I do the review. Your score is in no way affected. I've dealt with the pain in the previous paragraph. I swear.
Of course, if you really thought I was immature or that my scores were skewed for any reason, you wouldn't have requested a review. Right?
Content - 29/75pts.
[-]Execution - 10/45pts. This diary is different from any of the others I've reviewed in that it's set up in a weblog style format. And you've done each entry in one large paragraph. Pet peeve radar is on high alert. I mean, the first entry is nearly a thousand words long (well, eight fifty-ish) and it's one paragraph. But there's a time and place to discuss that, and this is not it.
Most of the entries seem to be about your site or something relating to your site. Bad poetry on the Internet (you hate it), linking back (you hate it), people who have navigation woes on your site (you hate it - sorry!). Oh, and an entry about reviews!
No one cares about what you're doing to your site. Okay, lie. Here's the correct version: I don't care about what you're doing or did to your site, especially what you did to your site two years ago. I can understand that it's really cool, ooh, I can make the image a link! (I'm not kidding. That's the coolest thing that I've EVER learned how to do in HTML.) But it just doesn't make for good reading.
Well, today I decided to change the GBM Reviews banner, and it wouldn't work, so I gave up and just stuck with the old one, lol, that's how it works sometimes. Oh, well! Maybe next week. :o)
Annoying, no? And, yes, you did write about real life often, but you dealt with real life just like you did your site updates. Today you did such-and-such with so-and-so, and then tomorrow you'll do something else.
Journals should read like stories, with characters for whom the reader feels sympathy. Your journal reads like a series of novel summaries, crammed together into one long paragraph.
What do I want, exactly? On the March 5th entry, about lines fourteen to twenty-one, you wrote about fighting with your sister. I think, I fight with my sister! (I don't have a sister, but if I did, I'd probably fight with her.) I also think, hey, this journal may have something to tell me, an insight or a joke, something about fighting with sisters! But it didn't. It had one big ANYWAYS that lead to a :o).
I was disappointed.
I wasn't disappointed by the only June 2002 entry, the bit about the dogs, I think because you said "peeing," and then later "present," but you didn't mean a real gift. Har, har!
I'm sort of kidding about the "har, har." I mean, yeah, the word "peeing" made me a little happy, but I don't think it was really able to counteract the fact that nothing on your journal is compelling.
On March 7, 2003, you wrote: "I need substance to judge!!! SUBSTANCE I SAY." I don't know what you were writing about because it was in the middle of a really long paragraph. But, you know, I agree. I want substance to judge. You didn't give me much. I mean, hypothetical puppy urine is funny, but it's one very small foot to stand on. You fell over last week. (I'm not very good at making metaphors, especially in these reviews.)
[-]Grammar/Mechanics - 9/10pts. You wanted to know how to spell "Shitzu's"? I looked it up. It's "Shih-Tzu," according to the dictionary. And, hey, NO APOSTROPHE! It's a word that's PLURAL. You don't need an APOSTROPHE. That's emphasis for you.
Actually, your grammar and mechanics are excellent.
[-]Readability - 2/10pts. I'm glad you got over that awful habit of using CAPS for emphasis instead of italics or some other method. (I'm sure my example showed you the problems with it.)
Your first few August 2002 entries kept babbling about VE day and VE forms and VE request. What on earth is VE? (Something to do with my Velcro shoes?) The same sort of confusion arises when you talk about your friends, and I can't keep track of them.
I give up quickly because, to be frank, it's utterly impossible to read a thousand words all crammed together into one entry. It's bloody hard! You want to be the next Jonathan Coe? I'm glowering. It's all right to do a weblog, but it's not all right to give up on your handy br and p tags. Not at all. It's only because you write coherently that you got any points at all.
Also, don't use "lol" and "lmao" and ":o)." You really won't listen to this request because, after all, once you get into the habit of using them, it's hard to break out of it. And so on. But, it's hard to read when they sprinkle the writing. This isn't an IM conversation.
[-]Style - 8/10pts. You write well. Now if only you could find something to write about.
Layout - 9/10pts.
[-]Aesthetics - 5/5pts. Nice. Fine.
[-]Navigability/Legibility - 4/5pts. A March 2003 link in your journal archives would be nice... there isn't a link to the most current diary entries in your oh-so-handy navigation menu (which works in all the browsers, by the way. Good job!).
Contact - 5/5pts.
Updates - 1/5pts. There's a loose rule about ten to fifteen entries a month. Some months, you'd only have one or two.
Errors - 2/5pts. On this page, the lower part of the text is one big link.
The link labeled "contact" returns a "page cannot be found" error. Why? Because you just list your e-mail address. It should be MAILTO:address@place.com, right? I'm sure you know what I mean.
The October 2002 entries are labeled as August 2002, causing me all kinds of confusion.
And then to make me get even more tics, on your archives page, the November 2002 link leads to that October 2002 page, which of course, is mislabeled as August 2002.
One's head whirls!
Total - 46/100pts. My head's still whirling. By the way, I had a go at that long sentence bit too. It was fun, but something to be left in the early high school years of one's life. :o) Looks like a pig. Oink, oink.
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