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I am barely a gifted amateur when it comes to this stuff. I have been seeing tools and terms frequently that I am not familiar with.

As a general request I would like if we include pictures wherever possible. It would certainly help me ( and as a result other beginners). I haven't seen many pictures while reading the post here. I would just add them myself but I have always been wary of editing other answers, except for grammar and typos. Like I said, I am sometimes not sure and just adding a random image myself might not align with the OP or answers view.

I know if would save people stepping out of the site for Google images. If we can get into a habit I think it would improve the site overall. Personally I think it would be more visually appealing.

As far as making this a request, instead of just a statement, we could have a blurb about this on the about for this site.

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    My advice is to unburden yourself from the self-conscience feeling of editing others' posts. You're edits will be reviewed by either the original author or someone with more "experience" than you. Improvements, especially clarifications to terms, will benefit both the community with higher quality content as well as the original author by way of receiving more upvotes.
    – drs
    Mar 19, 2015 at 14:45

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Certainly, if a photo or illustration helps makes a post clearer, that sounds like a great idea.

My only caution is to avoid bulking up posts with gratuitous images. A post should draw attention by the merits of the content, but let's not get carried away with the stock photos of a handyman driving a nail into a board just to draw attention with its crowd-pleasing flair.

But yes, certainly a helpful illustration where it is warranted is never a bad idea.

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  • let's not get carried away of course. I don't want to build shutterfly but I didnt know what a glazier point was and that would be a bitch do describe: "The tab dohicky that keeps the frame content in place". Some small photos would keep users in the site which is important. If they leave for other resources then that would be a failure of the community
    – Matt
    Mar 19, 2015 at 19:43
  • A picture is worth a thousand words but burns the disk space and network bandwidth of at least that many. Good took, used carefully.
    – keshlam
    Mar 20, 2015 at 4:01
  • Don't hogtie the community with concerns about disk space and network bandwidth -- if it were ever an issue, the CMs would advise about it at that time. We've got a lot of storage and bandwidth at the datacenter :)
    – Peter Grace
    Mar 23, 2015 at 18:08
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I think that's a great idea. New woodworkers may not know what tools are, and veterans may not know about items outside their chosen area of specialty. Plus, oooh... pretty picture!

I would suggest adding CC licensed images from Wiki would be good, as well as a link to the source is always nice.

At this point in the development of the site, editing posts to include an image where you feel it would be helpful will help set the trend for others to follow.

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