Pictures of text, acceptable or not?

Question

Every now and then I see questions (and the occasional answer) that include pictures of text, often commands and their output and similar.

Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but for clarity these are the main problems I see with this practice:

• The text is not searchable
  • makes the question and any answers less useful to others
• The text cannot be copied
  • requires more effort to answer
• The image is rescaled to fit the Stackexchange layout, often making the text illegible without taking further action
  • requires more effort to answer
  • makes the question and any answers less useful to others
• The image is external and can disappear at any time, leaving the question/answer potentially useless
  • makes the question and any answers less useful to others
• Probably doesn't play nice with screenreaders and the like
  • makes the question and any answers less useful to others

From my point of view it seems obvious that questions/answers should not be posted in this state but often there does not appear to be much of a reaction to this when it does occur.

What I wonder is what the sensible action would be when this has happened?

I generally just try to point out the problem in a comment when I see this. On occasion I have OCRed the image and edited the text into question in place of the image but doing that is more work than one generally cares to go through.

Should one downvote based on this? (Or is that just misdirected?)

Can a question be put on hold for this reason? (Should the very inclusion of images be considered 'suspect' on sites like SF where the image-rate seems generally low, potentially triggering moderation?)

Or is this whole practice even considered acceptable? It seems this might actually be the case, but the practice seems potentially really bad for this types of site (much worse than your average formatting problem). Maybe it simply doesn't matter too much unless a larger percentage starts doing this?

Answer 1

Where possible this should be avoided; users should copy and paste relevant text and format it with the code button {}. Please continue to encourage users to copy and paste instead of screenshot when possible.

However, it isn't always possible to avoid this. Often these images are the result of taking a screenshot of a KVM, iLO, iDRAC, etc., from which it would be impossible to copy and paste anyway.

In these cases I recommend editing the post. If the image isn't hosted at i.sstatic.net then take its URL and upload it there through the image upload tool, and replace the user's image URL with the URL hosted there. Optionally you can also make the image link to itself, so that it can be clicked on to view it full size.

I do not recommend downvoting simply because a user chose to include a screenshot instead of text.

Answer 2

I don't see any problem with screenshots. I don't even understand the issue here. It's a strange complaint, be.

Depending on the problem, the environment, the frequency of the issue and the resources available, a screenshot is sometimes easier to capture. This is especially true in the case of complex terminal output or any form of remote console/KVM/out-of-band management.

More than that, the screenshot is there to illustrate a point-in-time condition. Searchability is a non-issue.

I use code blocks and screen captures in nearly all of my questions here. Sometimes it's to illustrate a point. Sometimes it's absolutely critical to describing the problem. Very rarely are the contents of such an image necessary for search reasons. Sometimes text is the only appropriate method.

Let's say I'm trying to describe the state of the storage appliance I'm working on... Which looks better? Which makes more sense? Copy/paste is tricky, given the refresh rate. A screenshot of the relevant window does the job. Neither have important searchable text.

┌nmon─13g─────────────────────Hostname=san2─────────Refresh= 2secs ───18:40.40───────────────────────────┐
│ CPU Utilisation ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────│
│                           +-------------------------------------------------+                          │
│CPU  User%  Sys% Wait% Idle|0          |25         |50          |75       100|                          │
│ 1   0.0   0.0   0.0  100.0| >                                               |                          │
│ 2   0.0   0.0   0.0  100.0| >                                               |                          │
│ 3   0.0   0.0   0.0  100.0| >                                               |                          │
│ 4   0.0   0.0   0.0  100.0| >                                               |                          │
│ 5   0.0   0.0   0.0  100.0| >                                               |                          │
│ 6   0.0   0.0   0.0  100.0| >                                               |                          │
│ 7   0.0   0.0   0.0  100.0| >                                               |                          │
│ 8   0.0   0.0   0.0  100.0| >                                               |                          │
│ 9   0.0   0.0   0.0  100.0| >                                               |                          │
│10   0.0   0.0   0.0  100.0| >                                               |                          │
│11   3.0   0.5   0.0   96.5|U >                                              |                          │
│12   0.0   0.0   0.0  100.0| >                                               |                          │
│13   0.0   0.0   0.0  100.0| >                                               |                          │
│14   0.0   0.0   0.0  100.0| >                                               |                          │
│15   0.0   0.0   0.0  100.0| >                                               |                          │
│16   0.0   0.0   0.0  100.0| >                                               |                          │
│                           +-------------------------------------------------+                          │
│Avg  0.2   0.1   0.0   99.7| >                                               |                          │
│                           +-------------------------------------------------+                          │
│ Memory Stats ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────│
│                RAM     High      Low     Swap                                                          │
│ Total MB     32035.1     -0.0     -0.0  32755.0                                                        │
│ Free  MB      6578.1     -0.0     -0.0  32755.0                                                        │
│ Free Percent    20.5%   100.0%   100.0%   100.0%                                                       │
│             MB                  MB                  MB                                                 │
│                      Cached=   688.1     Active=   471.5                                               │
│ Buffers=    71.6 Swapcached=     0.0  Inactive =   601.5                                               │
│ Dirty  =     0.1 Writeback =     0.0  Mapped   =    43.2                                               │
│ Slab   =    90.0 Commit_AS =  1607.7 PageTables=     7.9                                               │
│ Kernel Stats ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────│
│ RunQueue              1   Load Average    CPU use since boot time                                      │
│ ContextSwitch     525.2    1 mins  0.22    Uptime Days=  0 Hours= 7 Mins=33                            │
│ Forks               5.0    5 mins  0.20    Idle   Days=  5 Hours= 0 Mins= 9                            │
│ Interrupts        356.3   15 mins  0.28    Average CPU use=-1491.10%                                   │
│ Disk I/O ──/proc/diskstats────mostly in KB/s─────Warning:contains duplicates───────────────────────────│
│DiskName Busy    Read    Write       Xfers   Size  Peak%  Peak-RW    InFlight                           │
│sda        0%      0.0      0.0KB/s    0.0   0.0KB    0%      10.0KB/s   0                              │
│sda1       0%      0.0      0.0KB/s    0.0   0.0KB    0%      10.0KB/s   0                              │
│sda2       0%      0.0      0.0KB/s    0.0   0.0KB    0%       0.0KB/s   0                              │
│sda5       0%      0.0      0.0KB/s    0.0   0.0KB    0%       0.0KB/s   0                              │
│sdb        0%      0.0      0.0KB/s    0.0   0.0KB    0%       0.0KB/s   0                              │
│sdb1       0%      0.0      0.0KB/s    0.0   0.0KB    0%       0.0KB/s   0                              │
│sdb9       0%      0.0      0.0KB/s    0.0   0.0KB    0%       0.0KB/s   0                              │
│Totals Read-MB/s=0.0      Writes-MB/s=0.0      Transfers/sec=0.0                                        │
│────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────│
│                                                                                                        │
│                                                                                                        │
│                                                                                                        │
│                                                                                                        │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Answer 3

There are cases where posting an image of text is possible, but the text could not just have been copied into the question. Others have pointed out some cases of remote consoles where this would be the case. The same holds true about the text in a kernel panic, which might also be relevant for a question.

But there are certainly also cases where it would clearly have been possible to simply copy the text into the question. In those cases I would like us to discourage the use of screenshots instead of copying the text. If the screenshot could provide some useful context, which could not be provided by the text alone, I would rather see both text and screenshot be included.

I am thinking adding a comment to the question asking for the text to be copied into the question, and then voting to close as "unclear what you are asking" might be the most appropriate response.

A different close reason might have been better, but would it be used often enough to warrant a separate close reason?

Answer 4

Just another note: if the screenshot is not included directly this increases the time one needs to read a question (click link etc..)

Additionally screenshots/images take more traffic, are more cpu intensive and basically take longer to load.

While personally i do not use SE other than on a desktop, it might be problematic for having console-only browsing.

(yes i do use that for other things..)

Fully aware that i am a minority on the usage though.

I still think if one is able to copy the text (not rewrite..) one should not be allowed to post a screen.