User blog comment:Kirkburn/Technical Update: May 14, 2013/@comment-2144972-20130515194357/@comment-452-20130515200149

As described in the email linked below, yes, the goal of the file page redesign is to bring more people to wikia.

The inclusion of those text snippets means that those images will get higher search result rankings, therefore more people will find the images through text searches, and hopefully click through to the images, see the ads, and Wikia will make more money. Once those users are on Wikia, the presence of the summaries is also designed to get those people to click through to the articles and stay on the wiki to view more ads.

Since Wikia is viewed by more non-editors than editors, most of Wikia's revenue undoubtedly comes from the countless viewers who never edit, meaning that it's financially prudent to consider non-editors first.

But it would be nice if logged in users had the option to view the old file page instead, since I haven't heard of a good reason to force logged in users to view that page with tabs.