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[–] 21 points 2 months ago (8 children)

Yeah that seems to be how Wikipedia does things. It tripped me up earlier today on a different page. Bizarre. Just go left to right, top to bottom. Reading order.

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  • [–] 27 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    I believe this is because many languages will interpret that differently, and Wikipedia having contributors from around the world writing in different languages, decided that clockwise is a good universal instruction that is more difficult to mistranslate.

    If the instructions were "left to right" and then "top to bottom", a bad translation might end up making it mean the top to bottom first and left go right last.

    Reading order

    In Arabic (and a few other languages too), things are read RTL, and plenty of Asian languages, at least traditionally, are read top to bottom first.

    Doing it clockwise is seen as a more universal instruction I guess? And I don't think it's too hard to figure out. I might also be to make the instruction more concise!

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Wikipedia has entirely different versions in different languages. This page is on the English Wikipedia.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago*
    1. having something consistent can reduce confusion among contributors, particularly for those who are translating pages between languages and

    2. there are other reasons too, like making the instruction more concise

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

    Clockwise order isn't the same as reading order. The correct order is:

    1. The top left image (because it says "from top left")
    2. The top right image
    3. The bottom right image
    4. The bottom left corner

    It helps if you imagine a circle around the images with arrows pointing in clockwise direction, like this:

    Drawing of 4 squares in a 2x2 grid, which represent the pictures. A circle with arrows pointing in a clockwise direction surrounds the squares. The squares are numbered according to the order described above.

    (EDIT: I made a correction to the drawing. I put the wrong order in the original drawing.)

    They could have just put the images in reading order though, especially when there are only 4 of them. It would be way less confusing :/

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Clockwise order isn’t the same as reading order

    Yes, I know. That's what my comment is criticising.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    "Clockwise" is universally known by all cultures, reading order varies.

    So when translating to a different language, you can't just say reading order, you have to change the article instead of just translating

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