Well... the very first paragraph of the article does say with highlighting how "the presentation quality for translations of on-screen text has taken a total nosedive". And then it shows visual examples of the new bad quality and gives comparison screenshots demonstrating good quality shortly after.
A small suggestion: ask a friend of yours who don't regularly watch anime to read your article for 20 seconds, and see if they can explain what it is about.
I spent quite some hours on CR, yet it was maybe until 30 seconds later before I realized what the "nosedive" refers to exactly. In fact, I kept thinking "quality" refers to "translation quality" and I was puzzled I could not see obvious issues.
It doesn't need to be that. Anyone given side-by-side screenshots without additional contexts should immediately tell you what's happening, and I've read lots of blog posts like that.
More specifically, the article provides 4 bad screenshots at fitst. I actually went through 3 of them. I kind of guessed what you meant but wasn't sure. Then there is another gallery of good ones. Why? Just provide good vs bad at the top, explicitly explain what's the expectation, and if needed, provide more examples. That'll be 200% better than this.
I made some revisions to the start of the article in order to make things more clear to the layman unfamiliar with anime and subtitling. Hopefully that clears things up!
The addition does indeed provide the clarity I sought. For reasons I won't bore you with, I truly could not discern what the issue was. Every one of my hunches was wong.
Hopefully you can see I was disappointed because it was something I wanted to care about, I just wasn't sure what it actually was I was supposed to care about.
I appreciate your openness to feedback, and I think the article is better for it.
The article says there's a nosedive. But by what standard(s)? See the questions I already posted in my original response.
Both the "good" and "bad" quality examples contain subtitles with no discernible difference. All examples contain legible subtitles. So where's the "nosedive"?
There's clearly some anime-specific context and nuance that is NOT communicated with context-less screencaps.
Perhaps the article wasn't written for someone unfamiliar with anime, and I'm not meant to understand, but it would be helpful to have the difference explained. Not to mention the improved accessibility for screen readers or folks with sensory processing issues like myself. At a minimum, marking up the image would be helpful. Circle things. Arrows. Help me understand, don't drop me into unfamiliar territory and leave me to guess.
The difference is that when there is text on the original video material, in the good examples the translations are positioned in the proximity of the original texts, and styled similarly, which makes it easier to understand what is translation of what, and generally improves immersion.
In the bad examples, the translations for the texts are mixed with the lines the characters are speaking, which makes it harder to follow.
That makes sense. Thanks very much for the clarification.