Feature summary
Introduce a new magic word to allow manual, explicit setting of a page’s PageImages thumbnail directly in wikitext. Suggested wording would be, by way of example:
{{#pageimage: Example.jpg}}
This acts as a hard override, telling PageImages to use (in this example) File: Example.jpg as the page’s representative image for search results, mobile view, page previews, and any other PageImages instances.
Use case(s) and Benefits
• Lets editors choose a specific thumbnail when PageImages’ automatic selection is unsuitable (decorative lead images, irrelevant gallery items, tiny icons, NSFW images(?), etc.).
• Avoids template hacks such as inserting a dummy lead image purely to satisfy#PageImages.
• Improves search UX by ensuring that key articles display meaningful, recognisable thumbnails rather than arbitrary or missing images.
• Reduces editor confusion: PageImages’ current behaviour is often opaque, and a magic word provides a clear, explicit instruction.
• Mirrors the logic of other magic‑word overrides (e.g., {{DISPLAYTITLE}}), making the behaviour intuitive for experienced editors.
• Would allow the manual workarounds of a large number of the bugs listed in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/731/
• Would also allow fixing of bugs like T432710: Social media cards crop images poorly with additional parameters e.g. {{#pageimage: Example.jpg|crop=bottom}}