Cover Articles
Cover articles are works of literature almost exactly the same in writing, ideas and content as one that has come before it, usually with a slight twist in picture formatting, or a tweak to the capitalization placement of certain "key" letters. Cover articles have existed ever since time begin, or very slightly after when someone got bored and decided to recreate the universe, but with the slight twist that hydrogen would be depicted by a blue square on the periodic table several trillion years later when the whole concept was dreamed up, instead of the red square intention of the original. Cover articles are not to be confused with "Cover Articles", which are articles of sufficient length to span a bed, and ideally keep the recipient slightly warmer at night than they would have been without it.
An example of cover article text[edit | edit source]
The Original[edit | edit source]
"ONCE upon a time there was a man by the name of Melville Amsterdam, who was walking down the street, going to work. He worked in a factory that made left shoes. The factory next door made right shoes, but it had been closed. Hence, Melville was limping."
The Cover Version[edit | edit source]
"ONCE upon a time there was a man by the name of Melville Amsterdam, who was walking down the street, going to work. He worked in a factory that made left shoes. The factory next door made right shoes, but it had been closed. Hence, Melville was limping."
As you can see, it's a resounding success. Not only is the cover version totally different from the original, it's also exactly the same! 10 out of 10 cats couldn't read either (being cats).
The Semantics of a Cover Article[edit | edit source]
Of course to write a brilliant cover article there are some key focal points that need attending to.
Firstly, there are certain things the reader is subconciously looking for in an article. The first thing is text. Make sure your article contains some, or none, whatever best keeps in complete style with the original.
Now, you can't just simply plaguarise other peoples work. Some new form of creativity has to be added to the mix, or you're in for potential confusion with an exceedingly lazy page cloning vandal. This creative input can involve absolutely anything! So long as it doesn't incorporate new ideas, deviations from the original text, humour, randomness or format variation. With these obstacles aside Cover writers have been able to write new exciting covers for genereations. ETH, one of the more well known cover authors liked to change americanised spellings in the originals into their more proper English counterpart in his works, often to rapturous applause.
Their Necessity[edit | edit source]
Cover articles are sometimes written by authors in the hope they can improve a previous article, or highlight it to readers who have forgotten it's predecessors relevance. Though this is not always the case. Some authors do it to punctuate a dry spell, or boost their edit count through simplistic means, whereas others do it to latch on to the original work's wild popularity, with the intention of much kudos and possibly a gold star for their work. This is different for Wikipedia admins, who can steal make money by simply writing information included on the site. A solid cover article for a Wikipedia op, or a "Wanker" as they're known on the site, can fuel an entire night's beer money, or if you're Jimbo Wales, several unecessary lectures and a hooker.