Crushingly Dull (newsoftheweird.com)

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	newsoftheweird.com
Date:	13/02/01 (30 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: loads of info

Disadvantages: surely of little use to researchers and not even remotely funny, interesting or even weird, so little use to the rest of us

This site claims to be:

"the longest-running, most widely-read bizarre-but-all-true news feature in the United States"

but is it as good as it sounds?

The site itself is pretty unimaginative and basic. The title page is simply a white background with black text containing a few links interspersed among it and at top and base of the page. It is also incredibly slow to donwload which is surpising seeing as it is so basic.

But hey! looks aren't everything...its content right? Well there is an enormous amount of information here as the site draws from the daily 'weird' columns in 160 of America's newspapers and lists them in its database...ouch! However, 90% of these are not exactly weird and 99% are simply not funny either. Trawling through all the rubbish to find something mildly humourous may be your idea of fun but it wasn't mine.

There are additional areas on the site such as a feedback page where you can sift through hoardes of site user's emails and comments as well as other mildly interesting subject areas but I got bored waiting for them to download so never looked(trust me the site is horrendously slow). However, with titles such as affiliates, books, FAQs, Chuck's Bio...I think I can be forgiven...

If this is meant to be a serious archive of information then its ok, but needs a better search engine(needs to have one), but if it was meant to be a humourous resource of weird news, then it fails miserably. There is such a thing as being discerning and the creators of this baby simply haven't learnt that yet.

The site looks dull...the info is dull and generally useless...and to be honest, the whole thing is best avoided.

Summary: