Thread:ARTaylor/@comment-47881-20120902172219/@comment-47881-20120902215323

The point of captioning is precisely "repeating information in the corresponding paragraphs" but in a concise and/or insightful way that will make the reader want to read the paragraph or that sums up a specific fact/event. We should not throw away captions basing ourselves on the misconception that our visitors read every article from top to bottom. Captions are supposed to be informative and sometimes allow the reader to grip the gist without having to read the walls of text besides them.

ARTaylor wrote: [...] 250px, which I believe is the default image size when submitting, was a large enough to fully appreciate the image but small enough to not crowd the article. I'm sorry but while that may have been the case years ago when the width of the pages was wider, it sure isn't now that it is much narrower (note that Wikia failed to change the image default size despite changing the page's width). 250px do crowd the page, especially when they're arranged like on Thor or Shadowcat (X-Men: Evolution). Those huge images draw attention away from what's actually important: the writing, and by imposing themselves on the reader, it makes the whole reading experience unattractive. Have you ever seen an encyclopedic entry in which its images squeeze the text into 4 words sentences?

ARTaylor wrote: It seemed to me that I should let the text do the talking. I agree, which is a good reason why we don't need enlarged images to spell everything out for the readers. If someone can't "tell what was going on" then they will intuitively click on the magnifying glass symbol and see the image in full resolution. Also, this is where the captions would play an important role.

I challenge you to find one popular wiki that uses that many and that big pictures (without captions) on their articles.

Also, images are useful to depict relevant and paramount situations, so we don't need one image to illustrate each scene. The amount of images used on Thor is overkill, I'm sorry to say. Especially when they're aligned practically back-to-back in one horizontal line.