There are two ways you can get your thumbnails to appear on imbalance2.

One, choose a featured image. That is the one which will appear above an automatically truncated part of your text/post.
or
Two. Use the custom excerpt function to place your picture with text you write as a summary of the post.
http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/the-excerpt-function/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/splitting-content/excerpts/

Search result pages now points to archive pages and the posts since the full content are duplicated. Before, on my blogs, it mostly pointed to posts. I wonder how Google will treat this duplicated content and the impact on ranking and showing up search result...

I share this concern as well.

Another site effect of this change is on the search result from Google, and probably other search engine. Search result pages now points to archive pages and the posts since the full content are duplicated. Before, on my blogs, it mostly pointed to posts. I wonder how Google will treat this duplicated content and the impact on ranking and showing up search result...

Yes, I feel strongly about this. I'm a retired editor/publisher and long-time blogger. I've spend a lot of time trying to make content accessible to readers.

Why would you embark on a plan to make all Archive/Category pages the same, particularly when the plan you have in mind is illogical, bad design? What's the point of offering dozens of different, professionally designed themes if you are going to set about making them all the same?

It seems to me that users who want full posts on their Archive/Category pages should simply change to a theme that already offers that. That's what I did when I wanted certain design features. But if you insist on redesigning themes to accommodate the desires of a few, I suppose I should submit a list of the changes I'd like to see in The Morning After. Let's see, for starters ...

I don't buy into the "provide content to readers in places where it feels like the content should be there" notion. That sounds like beginner blogger nonsense-speak to me. Where is the value in Staff making a minority happy and not notifying the rest of us that this change was afoot? How does that behavior create a strong sense of community?

I'm a librarian and a long time blogger. I have never desired nor preferred to use themes with Archives and Categorizes pages containing duplications of full blog posts. Dynamic Archives and Categories Pages operate as Indices ie. as Index Pages that readers can quickly scan through and click in from to read full posts.

Why create triplicated redundancy throughout the majority of all themes here to appease a small faction, who have yet to be seen stating their case for change on these forums?

In what way does scrolling through full posts on Archives and Categories pages improve the visitor experience?

In what way does creating triplicated redundancy of content benefit WordPress.com ie. Automattic?

I don't get it.

I say no thanks to triplicated redundancy. I don't need and don't want full posts displaying on my Archive or Categories index pages. My titles and brief custom excerpts communicate what's in my posts. Please, please don't take the ability to create custom excerpts away.

As I've said, in this and other threads, it is not good to take away control from bloggers for the way their sites look. And I have not heard many/any users complaining about not having complete posts in archives/categories. In fact, I have answered more questions here in these forums from folks who want to control what is shown as shortened posts.

IMO the complaints have not come from low level everyday users but have, for reasons I don't understand, from above.

But there is apparently no guarantee

http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/excerpts-no-longer-working?replies=8#post-1066509
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/problem-with-excerpts-with-theme-comet?replies=7#post-1066026

Je retombe donc sur le même sujet...... Sincèrement je trouvais justement cela très cogérent d'avoir juste le TITRE et l'extrait de l'article (une fois que l'utilisateur du site ai cliqué sur la catégorie qui l'intéresse) c'est justement pour faciliter les recherches des personnes qui n'aiment pas galérer sur un blog; pour les personnes qui aiment les informations rapides et claires...

C'était ce que je préférais dans les thèmes que j'ai choisi, c'est d'ailleurs pour cette raison que je les choisissais.

Pourquoi ne pas en avoir été prévenu et SURTOUT pourquoi ne pas avoir donné une possibilité de choix!!?

If you want to trim the content, you can always use more tag to control how much contents for each post to show on archive page.

The "more" tag is not the same as a custom excerpt. Custom excerpts allow the blogger to write exactly what he or she wants to use as a summary, including choosing a smaller picture which can be aligned differently from arbitrarily truncating a post.

The reasons for this change is that we've received a fair amount of requests from users who want to display posts on archive pages in the same way as on posts page, and we believe this is better for consistency.

I've not seen folks asking for such a change in these forums. With the custom excerpt feature it was/is possible to copy the whole content of a post (text editor) to the excerpt module so if someone wanted whole posts in categories and archives they could have them. (except for embeds and shortcode).

IMO making this change allows for less blogger control of what is published. Is it possible to make custom excerpts a feature we could opt in to use?