[Sigia-l] How much of a usability trouble "fancy" icons are?

[Egor]

New to the list, I'm not quite sure this is an appropriate place for such a
question. If not, please point it out.

I develop a newspaper's site. The front page is a list of very short
summaries from the featured stories, many of which go in regular sections.
Those sections have fancy icons that look cool when displayed in full size
with the whole story, but their smaller versions are giving me some doubts.

After reading some usability books, I started to suspect that they may add
more clutter than aesthetical value and getting rid of them in favor of
textual labels might be a good idea. What I'd find invaluable are opinions
from people (you :) who never seen the site before and, from what I read,
have the interest and expertise.

What do you think, should I ditch them, redesign them in a particular way,
or have I just read way too much of Jakob Nielsen?

P.S. The URL is at the bottom of the message.

Sincerely,
Egor Shipovalov  -  eXile's webslave
------------------------------------------
http://exile.ru - alternative coverage of Russia since 1994