Actually the Leaderboard used to do exactly that a while back - used to annoy me in some ways as well for that matter.(posted 9680 days ago)However, all power to the user it would probably be good as yet another "option" to check/uncheck on the search screen - off by default.
Actually Zwaxy, here's another suggestion for you. How about the concept of a "user-profile" whereby we can fill in our personal default preferences for number of lines returned, pictures, yada yada yada.....
BeeJay.