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I added a wallpaper screenshot to my answer to Architecture - 32-bit handling 64-bit instructions which was intended to illustrate the last sentence of the answer. Now I'm worried that I might have gone off the rails, and perhaps I should delete the screenshot.

Is this screenshot uncool?

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    That images gives me the chills... Autumn chills that is. Aug 20, 2014 at 4:40

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I would not characterize that small summer breeze image as "going off the rails" or "uncool." When it comes to that picture, I don't think you need to worry about anything so serious.

In my opinion, it doesn't add much to the post. But it doesn't really take anything away, either. It's small, reasonably unobtrusive, and arguably has the benefit of making the post more enjoyable. Or someone might consider it tedious or tangential. And maybe it effectively highlights the point about how installing 32-bit packages on a 64-bit system is the easier situation. Or maybe it distracts from it. Or maybe it makes no difference.

Personally, I probably wouldn't have included such an image. I'd probably edit it out of my own post if someone else put it there. I strongly doubt I'd edit it out of anyone else's. And other people might really like it. I think if you feel your answer is subjectively better with the image in it, you should go ahead and keep it.

This answer on Super User is widely liked. I upvoted it, though not for the images. While the pictures there are more strongly tied in to the answer's core message thematically, I think they're only slightly more relevant or useful than your summer breeze image. (The pictures there may even have the detrimental effect of conveying the message that Ubuntu users have to be more careful not to get hurt than Windows users, which is not true at all.)

So: I think your screenshot is not a problem or a violation of our community norms or anything bad like that. But maybe you should remove it. If you're just worried because it's somewhat unusual, I'd suggest keeping it. But if on reflection you think the post isn't any better off with it, I'd suggest removing it.

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In any case, you should provide an alternative text description (alt attribute).

By default, Stack Exchange uses "enter image description here":

![enter image description here][1]

When screen reader users now read your answer, they can’t know if the image contains relevant content or not. Which is bad.

In case the image is relevant, the alt content should describe the purpose of the image (which is not necessarily what the image shows; it’s what it means in context).

In case the image is irrelevant (for example, if it’s only decoration, or contains no new information because it’s also explained in the text near the image), the alt content should be empty.

In your case, I’d say the alt content should be empty. Unless I’m missing something, the image only conveys that something is easy. But as you are saying exactly that in the previous sentence, this should not be repeated in the alternative description.

![][1]

(I hope the Stack Exchange engine allows this.)

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  • I've seen something similar to what I wanted to convey in this answer by Terrel Shumway on Stack Overflow. He wrote that 32-bit and 64-bit binaries can be mixed only if you know what you are doing although I think of the 2 architectures more as different biomes than as different animals, hence the picture. Different animals ignores the fact that you might be getting yourself into resolving 50-100 different dependencies manually. I wanted something graphically illustrative of that.
    – karel
    Aug 31, 2014 at 12:19

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