Thanks for a very full and courteous reply I see now where you are coming from and now that I know I have set my own default to 300px which better suits my ageing eyes I am still a little puzzled though As was pointed out in the debate at Image use policy Archive 8 Forced image size if the image size for a thumb is not specified it forces the default image size currently 180px on any user who is using Wikipedia solely for reference and does not have an account Whose preference does this reflect For many images 180px is simply too small for the image to achieve its illustrative purpose moreover this possibility is explicitly recognised in the full text of the recommendation you quote above unless a size is specified outside the range of widths 120 300px that can be set in the preferences Also a recommendation is by definition not a policy Surely then it is not appropriate to enforce it retrospectively on other editors work You will see that I have now read up the debate on this issue So far I have yet to read anything to convince me that my views are unreasonable however I am still open to persuasion Thanks for your time patience Regards