Agreed. I have most of my experience in book design (mostly history of "book design", pre-Gutenbergian period) and do consider myself only vaguely familiar with web design. But I understand that through history images have posed a problem to "book designer". If images exist there (on the page) in their own right and the page is as much an image as a carrier of the text, the layout can be (and usually is) "creative". But in such towards written information and legibility orientated enterprises as wikipedia this is not a sensible approach. Furthermore, the images are only thumbs (pointers) and only full size image gives the full impression. So I see no particular reason for playing around with incomplete images what serve only as reference marks. →