I agree that the article thumbnails are very hard to see. Even if you do find an image that can be resized to 40x40 pixels for the article page, it will still be resized again to 25x25 for the front page, and by that point, it doesn't look like anything. I think the 25x25 "pinkynails" should be done away with entirely, and we should use the 40x40 thumbnails on the front page as well.

Also, I know how you feel about not being able to skip the thumbnail part of the submission process. Maybe there should be a standard thumbnail (like a Papertank logo) for authors who don't feel like uploading article images.

Very interesting idea, I like it.