Beware of cacodoxy (Writing a Good dooyoo Review)

Member Name: pje

Product:	Writing a Good dooyoo Review
Date:	11/11/01 (86 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You can tell everyone what you think about stuff.

Disadvantages: They can tell you to stuff your opinion because you're talking cobblers.

First taketh thy qvill, then ye dippeth thine ynstrvment ynto thy ink-well.
Thence maketh ye thy mark on ye parchment which telleth thy opynyon. Herein describeth ye objecteth vntil thine arm acheth.
Forgetteth ye not to blot thy copy!

Sayeth only which thy knoweth to be trve -
lest thy be condemneth to be not vsefvl.

Thence svbmitteth it to ye server,
that it shalt be transcribed and pvblished.
Thy Payment be two groats per opynyon,
wyth three-farthings per readeth.
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UPDATE November 2001

As you can see this was one of those very embarrassing 75-word efforts we all have knocking about in our dooyoo archives. And as dooyoo have changed their payments, I thought it was time I got round to re-dooing it. So here goeth...
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TITLE
'''''''''& #39;'
You want to grab people's attention, so how do you do it? Well, you could try SHOUTING IN CAPITAL LETTERS, but that will get up people's noses.
Of course some phrases do seem to draw people in time and time again:-
"dooyoo is rubbish", "free money" and, inevitably, "sex" spring to mind.
A good title bodes well for a good opinion, but take care not to disappoint people - they will have forgotten the title by the time they come to rate.


CONTENT
'''''''''& #39;''''' 9;''''
Mention all the features of the product and how it compares to similar products. Is it good value? Will it fall to pieces? Are batteries supplied? Was it a load of old rubbish? Don't hold back, it's better out than in.

Tell us what you think of it. It is supposed to be your opinion after all.
I think writing opinions is great fun, and it's very therapeutic too -

since I started the warders here have been able to reduce my medication quite considerably.

It's YOUR opinion. Written by YOU. Don't bother doing a cut and paste job with someone else's opinion. Frankly, if you can't write your own opinions you're too stupid to get away with fooling the rest of us,
and anyway, dooyoo will check your account before they pay out.


STRUCTURE
'''''''''& #39;''''' 9;''''''''
NO! I was a little depressed when Malu suggested that opinions should be well structured. Don't let the conformists strait-jacket you: be creative, be daring, be controversial, be imaginative, be bop a lula she's my baby.

I suspect that many opinions go unseen because people are inhibited by expectations. You can't realistically expect to be able to write a colossal critique about everything, and lots of things won't move you enough to write a masterpassion about them. (Yes, that is a word I looked it up - isn't it amazing what you can find in a good dictionary, like Chambers
or a good thesaurus like the bloody big Bloomsbury one I've got.)

One of the nicest suprises I've had on dooyoo was receiving a crown for my Catch-22 op. In its first draft it would have only garnered U's and SU's. [Sorry, alk, but I think it's clearer with the apostrophes. Language is like a river and it's better to swim against the tide than get sucked over a weir.
You'll have to imagine the punchline to that - it's far too dirty for dooyoo.] Even after I had shoe-horned in some stuff to make it a bit more useful,
I knew it was still likely to get quite a few U's and I was rather nervous about how people were going to react. (I felt the same way about my op on Twenty Questions in the other place.) To paraphrase the philosopher Kierkegaard, which is a bad habit
of mine, either you do a thing - in which case you will regret it, or you don't do it - in which case you will regret that too.† So just do it. (Kierkegaard/Nike - I always get those two mixed up.)

† Or as Bob Monkhouse once put it: Kierkegaard said that: to do, is to be; Sartre said that: to be, is to do; and Sinatra said: do be do be doo...


STYLE
'''''''''& #39;''
Everyone has their own writing style. Mine is a bit convoluted sometimes, unlike the free-flowing chatty style of many good writers on dooyoo.
I tend to note down lots of bits and pieces while I consider the 'product' which then leaves me with a string of unconnected words and phrases
to stick together into some sort of coherent piece. Can you spot the joins? I hope not! :o) Oh, and that reminds me, some people say you shouldn't use emoticons because they look amateurish :`( but 8oP to them. :oD

At times I try to cram as much as possible into every paragraph. like some demented holidaymaker, desperate not to miss their plane, trying to ram everything into one suitcase. Sitting on it. Jumping up and down on it...
I edit the life out of it sometimes. (Often late at night when there's no-one around to read it before I've finished.) Hopefully this means they aren't too long and boring. I have a short attention span myself - and I have to edit the darn things. Which brings me to:


LENGTH
'''''''''& #39;''''' 9;'
It can be quite daunting to click on someone's opinion and watch as the scroll-bar on the right shrivels to little more than a line. You aren't Tolstoy, Dickens or Vikram Seth (unless you are Vikram Seth of course, in which case why are you reading this - haven't you got another novel to write?)
Of course, some people will automatically give a VU rating to anything long
these people are known as length-whores, they probably only skim read opinions anyway. If you are a skim-reader I'd like to take this opportunity
to say what a parasitic back-scratching poodle-faced toady you are, safe in the knowledge that you won't notice.

On the other hand a one-paragraph opinion makes you look like someone churning out bare-minimum 75-word opinions, and you will tend to attract Somewhat Useful ratings.

Bear in mind that an opinion on a series of novels, or a group's whole career has to cover a lot more ground than one on a single book or CD, and if you're describing a DVD you should describe the special features
as well as the film itself.

People using dooyoo to research expensive purchasing decisions, computers, cars, holiday destinations etc. will be looking for a lot more information than someone deciding whether to watch a TV programme.
Of course if you're dooing an op on Life After Death in Speakers Corner you can write any old ßõ!!öçkŠ as far as I'm concerned. Who's to know?

Dear Sir,

I chose to believe in an after-life after reading *********'s op on dooyoo, and now I find there is no such thing. If it weren't for a surreal twist in the fabric of the pje-dooyoo-continuum I wouldn't even be able to tell you how disappointed and dissatisfied I am. Frankly, it would have been much more use to me if you had invited your members to give their opinions on coffins and worm-food.

Yours deceasedly,

Dickie Dodo.


PRESENTATION
'''''''''& #39;''''' 9;''''''''' 9;'''''' ;
Make it look good. Easy on the eye and easy to read. No txt msgs ok? Split it up into paragraphs which aren't too long.
Use sub-headings where appropriate.
Explore the character map that's hidden on your comp
uter somewhere (probably under 'Accessories') it shows that you ©@®€, ¥€§¿

Use a word processor and set your type face to Verdana, with font size 9, then you can get your margins to mirror dooyoo, and voila...
what you see is what you get, more or less.

It's not necessary to fight the text wrap-around by inserting your own line breaks and inserting an unbroken string of characters to stretch dooyoo's margins like I often doo. I'm just an anal perfectionist. [Or perfect asshole - take your pick... You see? That should have read "Or a perfect asshole" - but that would have put my asshole onto the next line which would have looked untidy. I need help I really do.]


SPILLING
'''''''''& #39;''''' 9;'''
A spell checker is not a teacher at Hogwart's, ok? If you've got it, use it.
Yo shud use a spill-chucker. Trypos and misspillled worms wil aggrovate reeders and they wil mark yur work down, fink yo ar a looser and nevver reed yor stuff agen. If yu aint gorra spill-chucker uze a dikshunry insted.


PUNCTUATION
'''''''''& #39;''''' 9;''''''''' 9;''''
Make it up as you go along - I always do.
After all: nobody knows what a semi-colon is used for anyway;
so... just throw in anything that looks pretty, ok? 8OP


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!! DO NOT... !!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

• Write your opinion straight into the box provided by dooyoo...
...if something goes wrong you will lose it all. Worse still, if nothing goes wrong, it will be published! (Because it will be a poor effort. They always are when you do it like that.)

• Give away the entire plot:
"...anyway in the end she throws herself under a train, a
nd it turns out that the policeman was the murderer, so-and-so was a ghost all along, and they never even got to the bloody lighthouse..."

• Use sweary words like ----, ---- and -------- in your opinions otherwise some people will get really ------ off by it. The stupid --------- !

Remember, there are children using dooyoo, so be responsible.
Not that those little beggars are responsible. Oh no, they just churn out dozens of crummy opinions to try and earn a few quid to buy fireworks, drugs, or petrol to torch the stolen cars they go joy-riding in with.‡
In the good old days kids were all stuck up chimneys, of course...
Which reminds me, try not to go off on one (an irrelevant tangent I mean.)

GRAMMAR
'''''''''& #39;''''' 9;'''''
d'ont use godawful grammar like that‡ were.
And read Alkaliguru's op'on where not to stick apo'strophes.
And start sentences with 'and' a lot to please jillmurphy.

But don't get too pedantic (or paranoid) about your grammar.
I once got stuck trying to decide whether "it's not" or "it isn't"
was more correct - that way madness lies don't it? 'taint worth it, is it?
Oh, forget everything I've said and just have fun.

I'd better go and lie down now the voices are starting again.


P.S.
Now go back to the beginning and read it all again - you missed a bit!
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