Poor Image: Anachronic Order

Eh, this one first struck me as a rather low quality image, but I also can't see anything that's going on. And I'm not following how this is in a nonlinear order. It's not really helping the page. It's just making it more confusing.

What a terrible illustration. I'd have mistaken it for a diagram of a Laser Hallway if I didn't know better.

I think that the black bars are time arrows and the bars between them event sequence arrows...

Well, it would be nice if the text were legible. Here's a suggested replacement.◊ I know it's boring, but that was all I could find. In Medias Res has a nice diagram similar to what we're looking for. Perhaps something illustrating the timeline from a work would do.

edited 24th Jul '14 5:21:44 AM by Rethkir

I'd be fine to pull without a replacement.

Current looks more like Time Travel and Parallel Universes. Doesn't show anything about how the story is told in relation to the chronology.

I'm good to pull it.

Boring, but Practical.

edited 24th Jul '14 6:51:59 AM by AnotherDuck

4 work.

4's boring. I'd honestly rather have no image than that. Really, most people don't look to the image to illustrate the trope. They look to the description for that. Images are just an interesting little exemplar to supplement the description, so if they're not interesting, there's really no point in having them.

I never said it was a good image. Well, there's also this.◊ It's illustrative, but I'm not sure if it'll be legible at wiki size. Though it can't be worse then the current.

"Interesting" isn't a requirement for page images. "Illustrating the trope" is.

4 is good. It's simple but gets the point across.

4 is not particularly interesting, but it's better than nothing, which is more than can be said for any of the other images mentioned so far. If anyone has an interesting image that illustrates the trope, then I'm all for it, but for now, I'll take what I can get.

4 is so-so. While "illustrating the trope" is a requirement for images outside of a Visual Pun, "visually interesting" is a huge benefit for any image. Especially considering that illustrating the trope is what the description is there for.

The current needs to go. Not impressed with anything suggested so far.

I'm fine with none over 4. Something that boring is only useful if it helps illustrate a difficult to define trope. This trope is straightforward enough that something that clinical just makes the page uglier.

"Visually interesting" is the image equivalent of "witty" (funny, awesome, interesting, and so on all are), I think, so in that sense yes it is a requirement. But nothing is a requirement, exactly, more like a gradient from 1% to 99%. Almost nothing is really 0% or 100% clear/concise/witty/etc, although accusing an image of being JAFAAC is saying it's 0% clear I guess.

Given a choice between high clear / low witty and medium clear / medium witty, I would choose the med/med over the high/low almost every time. IMO "clear, concise, and witty" translates to "illustrative, the fewest number of panels or words, and cool-looking or funny" for images. FE changed his sig to explicitly say that it's not descending order of importance, all three are important.

edited 25th Jul '14 4:21:11 PM by rodneyAnonymous

I'd almost suggest the timeline for Devil May Cry because it goes DMC 3, DMC 1, DMC 4, DMC 2, AND DMC 5 is a reboot that technically seems to place BEFORE DMC 3(or it's equivalent events in the new Timeline).

You could have them in chronological order and caption YES the story happens in that order.

edited 25th Jul '14 4:02:10 PM by shoboni

Images do not exist in a vacuum. That is what the description page is for. We can go on and on all day about whether or not an image "explains" the trope, but that's not what the average visitor to this site is looking for. If they've clicked on the page, obviously they want to find out about the trope and can read the text for that. Images should add a bit of imagery to the page, not just simply more explanation. If it's just a page quote or an extension of the description, it's not really doing its job.

Current needs to head off to the gallows. Blurry, ugly and hard to read. 4 is ...tolerable, I guess? It ain't great, but it works.

I tried to find a picture of the Narnia books stacked in chronological order, with their spine showing the publishing order. Closest I could find was the opposite:

edited 25th Jul '14 7:30:24 PM by tbarrie

Unless we know the publishing dates, though, is just a bunch of books piled in an disorganized manner.

Why do we need to know the dates? It clearly shows the numerical order on the spine.

We can say that that's the order they were published in in the caption.

I like it.

The quality is kind of bad though, like the application that made it smaller didn't do a good job of resampling. Where is the original?

edited 25th Jul '14 10:54:17 PM by rodneyAnonymous

I could make an image involving the Legacy of Kain series and the game covers. The order of game release itself goes - Blood Omen, Soul Reaver, Soul Reaver 2, Blood Omen 2, Defiance. In chronological order it's more - Soul Reaver 2, Defiance, Soul Reaver 2 (there's time travel in it) - Blood Omen/Defiance (more time travel), Blood Omen 2, Soul Reaver. And somewhere between Blood Omen and Soul Reaver is Soul Reaver 2 again thanks to more time travel.

A similar thing could be done for Kingdom Hearts. In order of release there was KH 1, then Chains of Memories, then KH 2, which were in chronological order. Then game coded, which took place after KH 2, 358/2 Days which took place alongside Chain of Memories, then Birth By Sleep which functioned as a prequel to the whole series.

edited 25th Jul '14 11:04:56 PM by DrakeClawfang