Timeline of the "recommended policy" - don't use "px" in your thumbed image -

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Pros
  • Prevents editors to enlarge images beyond proportions "because it’s such a nice picture".
  • Uniform (less chaotic) image layout in an article, and between articles.
  • Article dowload size
Cons
  • Not logged in users – most of our readers - don’t have preference settings and are therefore forced to look at default width thumbnails. Of course they can still click to see the image full size, but the "respect the users' preferences" reasoning is unimportant in comparison.
  • By my knowledge, controlling the size of a framed image with caption is only possible with a forced thumb size, and therefore the most flexible image markup control there is.
  • The whole article layout is the responsibility of all editors (size of paragraphs, tables, templates), why exclude thumbed image sizes from that? Because of logged in users’ preference settings?
  • Extreme aspect ratios of pictures cause problems with a default thumb width (see: Camshaft).
  • Proper detail requires a proper image size
  • Bureaucratic prescription interpretation: "you probably can’t handle appropriate image sizes, all the same width, prevents image size disputes"
Comments

Thanks for providing the above timeline and thoughts, Van helsing. El_C 18:31, 25 November 2006 (UTC)