User blog comment:Dopp/New Profile Design Now Live Across All Wikis/@comment-791183-20110818213727/@comment-1656630-20110818222105

The empty version is not so huge -- just the height of the avatar, which is pretty close in size to the second version of user profiles, which were circulating before. (not sure which version you had.) Note that the version you see for yourself is not the version others see of you. Check out the screenshots above for clarity.

You can remove it with modifications to your personal CSS, but not across the whole wiki.