The Ominous Comma was another big hit with our reviewers. Other than a few quibbles with the template and the highbrow nature of the site, there were very few negative comments. One reviewer summed it up thusly (to use an appropriately highbrow word):
"I probably spent as much time at this blog as at any of the ones I have reviewed. This is dry, subtle humor, but there's a lot of it there. Dr. Toboggans and Mr. Fording made me laugh a lot. The fake news stories were OK, but no better than any of the 5 other blogs that also do fake news stories that have been reviewed. My favorite part was the Consumer Commentary...very funny and insightful. I like the menu and the fact that you can find the topic you are interested in reading. Quite diverse, with a lot of talent in all of the areas. Nice blog!"
| Category | Score | Points |
| Content | 6.62 | 46/70 |
| Writing | 7.48 | 4/5 |
| Web Design | 7.38 | 4/5 |
| Intangibles | 6.67 | 3/5 |
| Read Regularly | 7.14 | 7/10 |
| Frequency | 8 | 4/5 |
| Total |
| 68 |
Percentile Rank: 94As you can see, I've added a new feature, starting with this review: A
Percentile Rank. The Percentile Rank tells you how a blog ranks relative to the other blogs that have been reviewed so far. To get technical, the number is
the percentage of blogs whose score is equal to or lower than this blog's score. At present only Sinister Dan has scored higher than the Ominous Comma, so the Ominous Comma gets a Percentile Rank of 94.
The Percentile Rank is meant to be a more user-friendly number than the raw score. However, it is only a snapshot of the blog's rank at the time of the review; obviously these number will change as more blogs get reviewed, and I don't have any plans to go back and update them. I will continue to use the raw scores to determine a blog's display ranking on the Humor-Blogs.com home page.
While I'm on the matter of scoring, another quick note: I just noticed that I transposed the Web Design and Writing scores on all the reviews up to this point. It doesn't affect the final scores, but it may have caused some confusion to readers of the reviews. I've gone back and fixed the affected reviews, and the numbers should appear correctly from now on.
Ok, on with the review. Here are some sample quotes from our reviewers regarding The Ominous Comma:
Definitely want to come back and spend some time with this funny, intelligent blog. Liked the landing page as table of contents, and the banner art.
I think I'm in love with the blog, the comma dude, that Harold guy too! This guy does everything right, from the template, navigation, design, content, and boy is it FUNNY!
The layout is terrible. I couldn't find the blog at first. But once I did, it's like finding a diamond in your couch cushions. Very funny posts, great writing. I guess the writer wants the readers to feel like they deserve to be there.
With characters such as Mr. Toboggan, how could I resist putting this site in my bookmarks? I hope I'm not disappointed over the long haul! Good so far!
It just felt like it was trying to be too smart too often, and for someone who loves #2 jokes, I was slightly disappointed. Although there was some poop flinging which tried to make up for it.
I'm a fan of the clean template. I found this site easy to navigate, and enjoyed the posts I read quite a lot.
I think my only problem with this writer -- which is something that bothers me about a lot of so-called and/or self-anointed humor writers -- is the need to tell me this blog is "funny". Hey, it's funny or it's not. That said, there was a lot of "funny" for the taking.
A great conversational style that is enjoyable and easy to read. Unfortunately, it's not very funny. Sorry to say that this site elicited only one smirk.
One little peeve: It took me a moment to find the most recent posts. I usually expect them to be on the front page.
I like the name Ominous Comma. It has a nice rhythm to it.
The blog looks great thanks to some decent designers he hired. I hope he hired them. Stealing is wrong. Brent has a confident style of writing that many may see as snobbish. Those many need to read a book.
My only beef with the blog is since the author added a homepage the site loads a lot slower.
Over-written. Spelling and grammar errors everywhere. Not funny.
AWESOME BLOG!!!!!!!!!!!
I have read many blogs but few have genuinely made me smile, this was one of them.
The site has some humorous moments but the author Brent seems to write about being funny more often than actually being funny.
Well thought out and written...the humor witty and sarcastic. Gives new life to the comma, a normally underappreciated part of our vocabulary.
Witty, good writing.
Great job, Brent. I have to say that I think your blog probably has the best name -- and one of the better templates -- of any blog we've reviewed so far. I'm actually a little surprised more people didn't complain about having to click an extra time just to get to the blog, but I guess the reviewers thought the blog was worth another click. So I've got no advice for you, except to say, "Keep it up."