I believe this is because many languages will interpret that differently, and Wikipedia having contributors from around the world writing in different languages, decided that clockwise is a good universal instruction that is more difficult to mistranslate.
If the instructions were “left to right” and then “top to bottom”, a bad translation might end up making it mean the top to bottom first and left go right last.
Reading order
In Arabic (and a few other languages too), things are read RTL, and plenty of Asian languages, at least traditionally, are read top to bottom first.
Doing it clockwise is seen as a more universal instruction I guess? And I don’t think it’s too hard to figure out. I might also be to make the instruction more concise!
I believe this is because many languages will interpret that differently, and Wikipedia having contributors from around the world writing in different languages, decided that clockwise is a good universal instruction that is more difficult to mistranslate.
If the instructions were “left to right” and then “top to bottom”, a bad translation might end up making it mean the top to bottom first and left go right last.
In Arabic (and a few other languages too), things are read RTL, and plenty of Asian languages, at least traditionally, are read top to bottom first.
Doing it clockwise is seen as a more universal instruction I guess? And I don’t think it’s too hard to figure out. I might also be to make the instruction more concise!
Wikipedia has entirely different versions in different languages. This page is on the English Wikipedia.
having something consistent can reduce confusion among contributors, particularly for those who are translating pages between languages and
there are other reasons too, like making the instruction more concise