Sandwiching

MOS:SANDWICH frequently conflicts with MOS:SECTIONLOC, including on Alewife station. I'm much more concerned about the latter when it comes to readability. On my ancient 1280px laptop and modern 1920px desktop, which bracket the most common non-mobile screen sizes worldwide, left-aligned images leave a minimum of 400px of text between the image and the infobox, and significantly more with the larger screen and/or selecting "wide" from the view options. Right-aligning the first several images cause the first 3 to 5 images to be pushed below the infobox, fully separating them from the relevant text. That is a vastly bigger disservice to our readers. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 15:42, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for contacting me! Imo, MOS:SANDWICH does not conflict with MOS:SECTIONLOC in any way. The latter simply describes where in the wikitext the image should be placed and describes the technical issues that may arise from an incorrect wikitext placement. The former simply explains cases where an image should not be left-aligned, and it specifically mentions infoboxes. As I said, if you believe this policy is incorrect (and it sounds like you do), you should discuss it at the MOS talk page, not for one specific article. Alewife station isn't IAR-worthy. FaviFake (talk) 16:08, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

{{clear}} can be used at the end of a section to ensure that images stay with their sections. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:27, 26 August 2026 (UTC)

The wikitext is not what our readers see. They see the article as actually rendered. MOS:SECTIONLOC says An image should generally be placed in the most relevant article section; I don't see how that would only apply to wikitext and not the rendered article. How does pushing images far away from the relevant text in the rendered article make it useful for readers?

This is also not an issue to be solved by arguing about this particular article. There are hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of articles with infoboxes and thumbnail images, a significant fraction of which have left-aligned images, which represents a de facto consensus that MOS:SECTIONLOC is more important that MOS:SANDWICH. If you want that de facto consensus changed, then please start a centralized discussion that is advertised to the affected Wikiprojects. In the meantime, I am going to revert the article to the longstanding format.

@Jonesey95: Unfortunately, that doesn't work with images opposite infoboxes. Forcing the first thumbnail image to be right-aligned still separates it from the relevant text, and would result in whitespace all the way to the bottom of the infobox. You can see those effects in this test edit. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 20:46, 26 August 2026 (UTC)