User blog comment:Emptylord/Wikia discussions/Vote: Portrait or Loading?/@comment-27024679-20141111180439/@comment-3974211-20141111181551

Kalista was perhaps a poor choice since her portrait currently lacks a border (as it's a placeholder) - but all portraits and loading images have black border.

As for "it doesn't take up as much space" - the template was specifically designed to hold the loading splash. Using portraits instead creates whitespace and doesn't actually free up any space for other content.

I'm happy with the opinion "it looks better", though. I'm on the fence myself. The asymmetry caused by the whitespace on portraits is visually appealing.