Poor Image: Tongue Tied

In other words we can just use a note to clue in the minority that we're using a left-to-right reading order so they won't be confused, and then there are less people who risk being confused, as most people won't need to read it at all, seeing as they have no reason to believe anything else in the first place.

No, I said that people would miss an obvious text, as a reason to use a format more people will understand with no text necessary.

It's not about reading comprehension. It's about reading it at all. See what I wrote above. Again, if you missed it the first time. That's why an image without text is preferable over an image with text, assuming they illustrate equally well.

I've not seen a solution to avoid any sacrifice, as what you're proposing is sacrificing the majority's clarity for the sake of the minority's.

"The majority" in this case isn't the amount of people familiar with Frozen, but the amount of people familiar with the English language. We do have Superman and a few other characters on images that a large enough majority is expected to recognise, but that's never done with just an image of him, as there's always something else that shows the trope one way or another. Don't use ridiculous strawmen.

Check out my fanfiction!

"Hey, the majority knows [Frozen]!"

I doubt it.

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

I was being facetious.

It was pointless and didn't help.

Check out my fanfiction!

I've already gone over why I don't believe flipped images are not better on their own than unflipped images with notes—several times, in fact. Once more: They have the drawback of confusing people who are familiar with typical manga reading order.

Ultimately, we come up against the question of which group of people is larger—people who expect right-to-left reading order and would be confused by the opposite, or people who are so unobservant as to miss a note directing them to read right-to-left (but still would understand the image if it were presented with left-to-right order). For lack of adequate data, there seems to be no easy way to answer this.

However, you did mention something else that I find interesting:

That thought actually did cross my mind at one point, but I dismissed it as something too crazy to work. Now that you bring it up, though, I guess you can tell me whether or not you were being serious.

Personally, as a non-manga aficionado, I would consider adding such notices to be better than using bare flipped images, but I guess you'd have to ask manga readers if it's something they'd be interested in. (Artistic integrity would still be a potential sticking point, I imagine.)

The Pope, what say you about this idea?

A note that an image has been edited?! Where do you draw the line... Color correction? Network bugs painted out? Replacing speech bubble contents so they are more legible? Speech bubble size shenanigans? More extensive painting? Flipping part of an image so it reads better? Assembling an image completely?

99% of readers will read a TV Tropes page image with text left-to-right the first time. Many of them will not read it a second time. Page images aren't meant to be puzzles, to be figured out by learning about a work.

You are either trying to draw a line between different kinds of page image edit, or trying to draw a line between one work type and everything else. I don't think either line exists.

edited 25th Feb '15 8:02:52 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

As I already said in response to your earlier Gunpoint Banter example, I don't mind those types of edits because they don't confuse people who are unaware that they have been made. As you yourself said:

In fact, I would even go so far as to say that these types of edits can sometimes be objective improvements, as opposed to making the image better for 90% of people and worse for 10% of people. That is the key difference—the "line," as you put it—between flipping images and all the other ways you listed of editing them.

edited 25th Feb '15 8:05:17 PM by MrL1193

More like better for 99% of people and worse for 1%.

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

You seem to really be pushing the idea that the minority I'm looking out for is unimportant. I'm just going to say again that that attitude really doesn't sit well with me.

Even if it's 99 to 1? According to any kind of system that is overwhelming consensus.

Also I doubt that there are many people that will recognize a particular manga image that is originally read right-to-left (which isn't even all of them!) and be confused by a version of it that is edited to read left-to-right on a site where literally everything else reads left-to-right. That's absurd. You said "[flipped images] have the drawback of confusing people who are familiar with typical manga reading order." I don't think that's true. They are reading TV Tropes, not a manga, and they know that.

edited 25th Feb '15 8:31:40 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

I've already said time and time again that a note would be preferable. A banner notice or something to that effect would probably be a little overbearing.

Do we have a Useful Notes page on reading right to left? Why not just always link to that so readers are educated instead of misinformed when you present them with an image that's been altered against their knowledge?

"They are reading TV Tropes, not a manga, and they know that."

They also probably expect their manga to be represented properly and not altered. If anything, a manga reader is going to be more jarred when a scene they know from the manga is flipped backwards for some unseen reason.

edited 25th Feb '15 8:35:33 PM by ThePope

Would you mind telling me why you're so insistent on this particular figure of 99% as opposed to any other number, other than the fact that it sounds better for your argument?

I can personally attest to having been confused by manga images in the past because of flipping. In fact, this whole debate got started again because The Pope complained that he was confused by a flipped manga image. The flipping policy has already confused at least the two of us, and probably others as well, no matter how much you try to downplay that drawback. If we can take action to correct the problem, we should.

That is not strictly true. They are reading manga when they look at a manga image on TV Tropes. And, as The Pope says, the natural assumption is that the image is unaltered, not that TV Tropes has taken to enforcing left-to-right reading in a much more draconian manner than usual.

edited 25th Feb '15 8:59:21 PM by MrL1193

Just going to point out that we are talking about lone manga images on trope pages. There's no reason for people to think that it's a manga...

I repeat: There is reason to assume that the manga image is unaltered, even though it does appear on a non-manga site. This doesn't matter if you're just doing something like brightening the image, but when you change the reading order, it matters.

Might I advise that the policy meta-discussion be continued in the policy thread? This one should be about the image on one article.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I've cut the characters out of the pic. Since there hasn't been any caption discussion, I'll go ahead and lock this.