Last modified: 2014-06-20 19:53:06 UTC
The "Add an image" icon next to the "Edit" icon is inconsistent with "Edit" and "Watchlist" in two ways: 1) It has a padlock indicator even if the only thing that's preventing me from uploading is that I'm not logged in. (Edit only has a padlock indicator when the page is protected, and watchlist never has it as far as I can tell.) 2) The actual call-to-action that appears when I tap/click the icon is different from the one that appears when I tap/click edit (not-so-friendly white on black message, as opposed to the more inviting "Help improve this page!" message when I tap/click edit, with a big blue login button). I suggest having it behave similar to Edit/Watchlist for the common case, i.e. no padlock indicator and similar CTA design.
Prioritization and scheduling of this bug is tracked on Trello card https://trello.com/c/UWbdeyog
Not sure when/where you noticed this, but we've recently changed the behavior of this feature – you should only see the upload icon if you're able to upload something (e.g., you're logged in, have permission to upload, and the page is lacking an image). You shouldn't ever be seeing the locked upload icon & inconsistent toast message. I'm looking at prod on enwiki now and this is the current behavior for me. You might have been looking before the deployment train carried this patch over to enwiki.