Steps to replicate the issue

• Go to a Wikipedia.
• Start typing the name of an article in the search box.

What happens?:

• In search, an image placeholder for the thumbnail is shown if the article has no Page Image.
• The placeholder used is the Codex icon: cdxIconImageLayoutFrameless

Refer to: https://doc.wikimedia.org/codex/latest/icons/all-icons.html

The intention behind cdxIconImageLayoutFrameless in Codex seems to be that it acts as a temporary stand‑in until a suitable page image can be found. This is reasonable for many articles (e.g., chemical substances lacking photographs above), but is not appropriate for all. Some articles have no image and cannot ever have one — for example, obscure ancient historical figures with no surviving depictions. In such cases, showing a “missing image” icon implies the page is incomplete or that an image should exist, which is misleading.

Third‑party wikis may also be text‑heavy (e.g., glossaries, dictionaries (All-and-every-Wiktionary) technical reference sites) and have little need for page images. For these wikis, the placeholder icon introduces unnecessary visual noise and suggests missing content where none is expected.

What should have happened instead?:

A more appropriate fallback already exists: cdxIconArticle. This icon represents “an article” rather than “a missing image,” and does not imply that the page is incomplete or that an image is expected. If PageImages returns no image, the search interface should show cdxIconArticle instead of cdxIconImageLayoutFrameless. This avoids implying that the page is missing content, respects pages where images are inappropriate or impossible, and avoids misleading signals on wikis that intentionally do not use page images, so is better Design