fingerboard diagram and chart conventions

[mambo4]

Every week I see someone post a new fingerboard diagram of one sort or another:
all the notes on the neck, scale shapes, or chord tones/arppeggios etc.
I once posted some, to which someone responded "those are left handed!"
which of course they were not intended to be, but it got me thinking:

what are the conventions, if any, for a fingerboard diagram?
If somone just posted an abstract box with dots, what orientation would you assume?

for example, if you saw this:

|---|---|-X-|---|
|-X-|---|---|-X-|
|---|---|---|---|
|---|---|---|---|

what would you think was being indicated? this (my choice):


<---bridge---nut---->
|---|---|-X-|---| E string
|-X-|---|---|-X-| A string
|---|---|---|---| D string
|---|---|---|---| G string


or this:


<---nut----bridge---->
G string|---|---|-X-|---|
D string|-X-|---|---|-X-|
A string|---|---|---|---|
E string|---|---|---|---|


i suppose the safest bet to avoid confusion is to go vertical:



-------
| X | |
-------
X | | |
-------
| | | |
-------
| X | |
-------




are there conventions about this? what do you think?

[Hellbastard]

The convention for this kind of diagram comes from Tablatures, so the line on top is assumed to be the G string.

[Icculus]

Originally Posted by Hellbastard

The convention for this kind of diagram comes from Tablatures, so the line on top is assumed to be the G string.

Yeah. I'm seeing a minor triad on tablature

[mambo4]

ah, I see. I never bothered with tab, so I tended to look at these diagrams literally, as if I were facing a bass neck. thanks for clarifying.