[WikiEN-l] Worrying trend: Size of thumbnails

Tue Feb 10 22:21:10 UTC 2004

Hello,

do thumbnails really have to be this large?
http://en.wikipedia.org/upload/thumb/a/a1/350px-Nyc-un-building.jpg

The main purpose of thumbnails is, of course, to prevent full-size 
images from cluttering an article. My perception is that another purpose 
is to spare visitors with slow connections from having to download large 
images if they're really only interested in the text of an article.

It seems that a lot of people have begun to make thumbnails excessively 
large. For visitors with low resolutions, 350px is a *lot* -- especially 
if their browser window isn't full-screen. 350 more than half of 640 -- 
add to that the sidebar, and there's not much left for the actual text. 
Purpose #1 is therefore not fulfilled.

Also, it makes the files pretty large. 14KB doesn't sound large to DSL 
people, but on ISDN it would take 2 seconds to download on maximum 
speed. Add to that the fact that Wikipedia isn't always at maximum 
speed, and that many people don't even have ISDN! Purpose #2 is 
therefore not fulfilled.

Arguments I have often heard regarding this are that you can't see a lot 
of detail on thumbnails that are too small. I fail to see how that has 
any relevance to *thumbnails* -- thumbnails are supposed to give a quick 
glance of an image. People who want the details are supposed to click on 
the thumbnail to see the full-size picture with all its details.

Please consider making the thumbnails smaller.

Thanks,
Timwi