ibid

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The Restaurant at the End of the Univ…

General discussion for scifi.stackexchange.com, both on-topic ...

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 01:08

@Laurel semantically is alt text on a image that is also a link a description of the image or of the link?

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:55

The click through version isn't the one meant to be read with the answer.

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:54

But like I guess that I hope that if someone does want to inspect something in the image and tries interacting with it they'll notice the link.

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:53

The link isn't actually important to the answer

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:52

It's more of a why not

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:52

I don't think the full size version is particularly needed though

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:52

I often do them as links to the full image as a bit of a hack to be able to include the full thing without it obstructing too much space in the answer.

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:45

And so many of them will have neither the default alt text nor any other alt text

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:44

Because not every imgur link is an image

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:43

Are you including links to images not formatted as images?

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:43

Interesting

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:38

@DavidW could probably check this with a data se query

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:38

Also this seems like an issue with SE, not with alt-text guidance

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:37

" "

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:37

What about white space?

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:36

Hmm

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:36

Oh, I wasn't following that chain

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:36

I think we can all agree the vast vast majority of images on the site have the default.

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:35

How so?

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:35

The correct alt-text would be to leave it blank.

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:35

All of those are equally incorrect, but "enter image description here" is the only one of them doesn't demonstrate intentionally being incorrect.

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:31

My answer provided clear context and a caption to the image

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:30

@Laurel My answer isn't like that though. If this was the case here I wouldn't have rolled it back.

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:28

Show me an alt text guide that says to write "see caption" for the alt-text of images already captioned.

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:26

Not when the context and caption make it clear what it is.

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:25

Not that you did the wrong thing

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:25

It represents that you didn't do anything

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:25

Yes, but it's also the default

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:24

And when the alt text is repeating info, it's a less cohesive experience.

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:24

Alt-text is to ensure a cohesive experience. It isn't an "every image just have alt text" thing.

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:22

I spent a bit of time looking it up to be sure prior to the rollback

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:21

Because the style guides I looked at were pretty clear that alt text shouldn't repeat info that's already on the page

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:13

Here too, I'd much prefer a placeholder alt-text that is wrong than a non-placeholder alt-text that is wrong.

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:12

Maybe the point would have improved the answer if made correctly. And if it was and I rolled it back I'd be unimproving the answer. But it wasn't.

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:09

I basically see it as if there's an additional point I could have added to my answer but never did, and then someone comes along and adds the point but in a way that's completely incorrect. I'd prefer to remain in the orginal neutral state then to have incorrect info specifically added in.

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:07

Purposely inserting alt text which doesn't improve the experience or match guidelines turns that from neutral to incorrect.

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:06

As long as the placeholder is there it just indicates that no effort has yet been made.

ibid

Mar 2, 2023 00:05

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of images on the website have the placeholder text.

ibid

Mar 1, 2023 23:55

And when I looked up guidelines for alt text I saw the same thing. That you're not supposed to repeat information already on the page. You either add new information if needed or if not needed you leave the alt text blank.

ibid

Mar 1, 2023 23:54

Knowing that there was a picture and then seeing a transcript under it is more coherent than adding an alt text between the two saying "see transcript".

ibid

Mar 1, 2023 23:52

@Laurel yes, but in the case in question the proposed edit wasn't helping with this

ibid

Mar 1, 2023 23:50

But maybe it helps with seo or something? Perhaps there's some metric like "percentage of images with alt text" which that helps meet even if completely useless.

ibid

Mar 1, 2023 23:49

For every user who sees it and is motivated to add something there's probably another 100 users who won't touch it regardless and now their alt text is cluttered with that garbage.

ibid

Mar 1, 2023 23:47

@DavidW also personally I think stack exchange should stop adding that default alt text placeholder. I'm going to guess it's done a lot more harm than it's helped.

ibid

Mar 1, 2023 23:45

@DavidW I think the proper response to an incorrect edit is a rollback, possibly followed by a correct edit if needed. I don't think answers need to have correct alt text and don't add them myself. But regardless of that, the edit adding incorrect alt text should still be rolled back.

ibid

Mar 1, 2023 23:40

@DavidW I know it's not how it works now, but I think it can hypotheticaly work like that, while a custom incorrect text cannot be as easily fixed. I'm not saying it's correct, just that both options here were wrong.

ibid

Mar 1, 2023 23:22

In any event, as I've said in the comment, I don't particularly care to add alt-text myself to all of my answers. If you wish to correctly do so, that's fine, and I won't remove anything which actually improves the answer. But not all images are supposed to have any alt-text, and I generally provide adequate captions in my answers that alt-text is very often not appropriate. I don't consider incorrect alt-text to be an improvement to an answer and so I roll back such edits.

ibid

Mar 1, 2023 23:17

@Mithical - Responding here because the answer was locked, but when an image has a caption, the correct alt-text is an empty string. When your alt text just says the equivalent of "see caption" then that isn't correct alt text. It's debatable if that is better or worse than the default "enter image description here"†, but it's still 100% incorrect.

†(Personally I'd argue that it's worse, as with the large frequency that "enter image description here" is used, I'd imagine that screen readers can easily filter that out, while they won't be able to filter out custom useless alt text.)

Discussion on question by Silvermidni…

Imported from a comment discussion on scifi.stackexchange.com/...

ibid

Jan 22, 2023 07:27

@Silvermidnight - The video in my answer is not the movie. My answer was focused on the books are on other materials that JK Rowling would have been directly involved with. The Harry Potter movies are generally completely separate from the books and do their own thing. While their may be some examples of Runes in the movie, I can assure you that that specific image isn't in the movies either though.

ibid

Jan 22, 2023 07:27

@Silvermidnight - Your new image is also not found in any Harry Potter property. Where are you finding these pictures?