Is answering questions in pictures of scribble acceptable

Question

I've noticed a user who seems to answer mainly via a picture of scribble and maybe a few words instead of writing it down, using the circuit simulator and MathJax.

An example would be this answer. [The initial version with the scribble.]

I was wondering if this is an acceptable way of answering questions.

In my opinion answering in a picture of scribble is not acceptable as:

• depending on the handwriting it is barely understandable
• formatting gets very poor depending on the screen size
• people who use custom formatting options (think high contrast or something) will loose their possibilities to make changes
• In the future the hosted picture (depending on where it is hosted) might disappear rendering the answer completely useless

I'm just not sure what the appropriate action is: just down-vote or should they be flagged for attention?

Answer 1

No, it shouldn't be acceptable. Some of the reasons for such you listed.

As for the picture hosting, such doodles are usually uploaded through the website, and trusting imgur to not go down is something SE reasonably does.

But doodles have their own problems, in that often they are of very poor layout, due to the nature of not being able to move content as easily after created. So this is usually fixed by arrows or even not fixed at all, which leads to a confusing answer.

Some other very important concerns:

• Doodles are unstylable, so for those with high contrast (as you mentioned) or dark themes enabled on their browsers, they usually become a BASTION OF OVERWHELMING, EYE-SIZZLING BRILLIANCE. Which is non-ideal.

• Doodles are inaccessible. At least until the day OCR software can detect handwriting better than humans, any visually impaired person is going to be locked out of the information provided.

• Doodles are unresponsive. Trying to view them in a mobile device is going to be a challenge, with the usual zoom-and-pan juggling.

• Doodles are messy. This is not a criticism on any author, but everyone has a different palette and style for their doodling, as well as a variety of sources (photo of paper, digital drawing, screenshot, etc). This means that the visual consistency of the website gradually lowers with every new doodle.

And finally, I think doodles are fine, if they are auxiliary to the understanding of the answer. That is, if the doodle is unavailable, the answer will convey the same amount of information.

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As for what actions to take, I would ask the author to "textify" their answer, wait a day or two, and if they don't, either fix it yourself if you have the time (and if it's possible), or downvote if not.

Answer 2

Napkin answers are problematic for many reasons, many of them already mentioned. Though I have noticed they normally appear from smart-phone users that can't really use better tools.

Another reason why they are not great applies not only to doodles but images in general where the writing on the image is a critical part of the answer.

Many readers rely on auto-translation tools built into browsers to convert the text into "something resembling" their native language. Unfortunately, those translations do not extend to image content.

"A picture may tell a thousand words" ... does not apply in these circumstances.

Answer 3

I was wondering if this is an acceptable way of answering questions.

Not really, everything that is written inside of the image won't be search-able through the search function or through google.

For those who don't get my comments in that answer you linked. It's a joke. Would we ever want more doodles? I think not. I mainly wanted a reaction from the person making the doodles to understand his/her thought process. But then you two began commenting and now s/he won't say anything.

Answer 4

Too many of your complaints say "depending". That is to say, "depending on if the work is good or bad". I retort that good work is good work, and bad work is bad. I am never ok with bad work.

But I'm super ok with hand-drawn graphics, as long as it is good work. As to your points:

• Handwriting should not be in a graphic, for search reasons. If it is doubled in the text, it is redundant and adds clutter to the graphic. But that is something you can fix.
• Formatting "might be" poor depending on screen size? Viewing quality content on a phone is like listening to Loveless or Dark Side of the Moon on a cellphone speaker. Surely you can't mean excellent content should be dumbed down to work well on your phone.
• If you use custom formatting options, and it doesn't handle all content well, your stuff is broken, not the contributor.
• Absolutely agreed, if a picture is hosted not at official SE locations, edit the post so it is. That is an SE policy not to rely on outside sites, which can 404 over time.

SE is a gift economy. People contribute freely like beer. Often we have real luminaries with very limited time to compose answers, so they use the tools they work best in. I draw my own circuit diagrams rather than use CircuitLab because I need to use 11 colors and I package info CircuitLab refuses to, like screw colors and cable bundling.

Others give, but you also are here to give. Your proper response to a posting you feel can be improved is not to throw rocks and judge, because that damages the gift economy by deterring giving. The proper response is to improve it. So feel free to edit the post, textify his handwriting, fire up Photoshop and cut up his doodle into several graphics and place them inline. Capture his intent, then comment to say "Did I capture your intent?"

I've done this for others, and it never occurred to me to be mad or bitter about it. I don't get your problem.

When you just fix it, you change the author in a different way, instead of driving him off, you get him thinking "you know, I could just do that myself" and next thing you know, he will. It's educating by demonstrating, rather than "educating" by rallying people into downvote harassment, which, I can't see where the pot of gold would be on that.