Where are you diving at? What is the dive plan? HUGE part of the question you left out. Now if you want to make ASSumptions that everyone only dives sidemount in a cave, you will see a bunch of people doing it wrong.
But not everyone sidemounts only in caves. I did it for logistics. I can rent single tanks and go diving and not have to find that set of doubles. I'm not going through tight squeezes. Really, a set of doubles would be fine for me. Well they are very heavy and my back doesn't like them, sidemount is much friendlier.
With that out of the way, Lollipop them gauges straight down! Well they are pointed in a little, but still they stick out like curb feelers. Don't care if it pisses off the cavers, I'm not in there cave. They are right in front, easy to read, easy to know when to change regs.
Now if I started getting into places with tight restrictions, the gear would be configured differently. That would be part of configuring the gear correctly for the dive planned.