Policy for image placement?

Some articles have images on the left, some on the right.

Occasionally, the formatting of the article causes one or the other to look weird or wrong. Barring these instances, is there a rule of thumb for where to stick images?

I just stick it on the left since that requires less coding.

Multipart answer follows:

1. Never listen to Deboss about anything.
2. If the article starts with a quote, the image goes on the right.
3. If the image makes the article text flow weirdly when on the left, put it on the right.

My personal rule is to put it on the right, because I think it almost invariably looks better that way. That seems to be followed more often than not nowadays, but I don't think there's any actual "policy" on it.

Edit: Or just listen to Fast Eddie above!

edited 6th Oct '10 2:08:16 PM by suedenim

T.T

Agreed; right aligned almost always makes the page look better, except when the pic hangs down into the examples.

I disagree that left aligned looks best, so what I do is "left aligned unless that breaks the page, otherwise right aligned".

Another fan of right-aligned here. Left-aligned images require the reader to shift his gaze midway across the page (away from where the left margin is usually located on the wiki) before they can start reading, which is annoying.

—R.J.

edited 6th Oct '10 5:51:16 PM by rjung

That, and it is a whole lot of picture right next to the left column ad, which is typically also a picture.

edited 6th Oct '10 6:44:55 PM by FastEddie

Having the picture to the right almost always look best.

It steals less focus from the text that way, plus the issues that have already been mentioned.

The only situation I know where I feel a need to have the image to the left is when it's main character is facing to the right. Having the character face away from the text looks horrible.

Utopia Justifies the Means looks very awkward right now, with the picture having been moved to the right. I thing we should either move it back to the left, or replace it with another picture.

With Medusa it is simpler, since there is no speach bubble: Keep the same picture, but flip it in photoshop so she's facing to the left instead. Remove the "asudem" label (that said "medusa" before the flip) and then put this version to the right instead. If noone else gets around to it first, I'll do this update myself once I have gotten around to installing photoshop again.

^ I did that. It turned her into a southpaw but what the hey...

Zapped that Utopia image. Didn't illustrate, anyway. Also, flipped the image on Medusa. Looks like Maddy is moving it right.

Ninja'd. Wait, did we both flip it? Looks like we did.

edited 7th Oct '10 1:28:37 PM by FastEddie

Actually Eddie, you unflipped the image Foxxy Mod flipped Or something. Eitherway, swapped it to the flipped image

edited 7th Oct '10 2:08:53 PM by Ghilz

18 seconds between those posts!

Well, I lipped it in place (with the same title), which means you were most likely viewing the unflipped copy in your cache. Anyhow, it is done, now. I resized all of them so they fit under the 350 width. It was at 351, just enough to make the browser have to work on it, thereby slowing down the page.