Suggestion: restore excluded files in base image and provide a slim variant
Since MR !13 (merged), pacman is configured to exclude non-essential files (such as docs and translations) in order to reduce the image size. At that time, a comment already mentioned that this makes the image less usable as a development environment. In addition, it seems to me to contradict one of the principles of the image:
All installed packages have to be kept unmodified
Now that the image is listed as official, I would suggest to make it as close as possible to a regular Arch Linux installation. The current stripped version could become a slim variant, like the slim variant of the Debian image.
Would this make sense to you?