Wiktionary:Votes/2021-07/Deleting the Index

Deleting the Index
Voting on: Deleting all pages in the Index and Index talk namespaces (after briefly moving them to the Appendix to save the edit history), and then asking filing a Phabricator report to ask the devs to remove the Index and Index talk namespaces from this wiki.

Rationale: Our index pages were originally intended to mimic a print dictionary, but now that we have lemma categories, they serve little or no purpose. Much worse, they were bot-updated, but such updating hasn't occurred for over a decade, so they are now not only useless, but also embarrassing. Many have been deleted individually at RFDO, but we would be better off dealing with the whole problem head-on.

Schedule:
 * Vote starts: 00:00, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Vote ends: 23:59, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Vote created: —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:46, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Discussion:
 * [[Image:Wikt rei-artur3.svg|20px]] 
 * [[Image:Wikt rei-artur3.svg|20px]] Wiktionary talk:Votes/2021-07/Deleting the Index

Support

 * 1) . Completely outdated pieces of shit that need to be nuked. Possibly there is something that can be salvaged in pages like Index:Chinese Cangjie and Index:Chinese four corner and subpages of these.   who have edited the pages relatively recently or might have some idea what to do here. Benwing2 (talk) 04:49, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't care for the Cangjie/Four Corner pages, but maybe they could be Appendices. —Suzukaze-c (talk) 06:13, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I have even written bot to update these Chinese indices, continuing RIP'd Ullmann's work. A lot of time (and codes) has been dedicated to his work since 2015. You already know that Unihan does not often update; it might be yearly or more. I would like to keep these good work you won't find them anywhere. (Moving is okay but I am against deleting them.)--Octahedron80 (talk) 04:35, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I support moving the Chinese character indices to the Appendix namespace. Can you identify the full list of pages (or at least of page roots, because there are lots of subpages) that should be kept? If I end up being the one who implements the move/deletion, I can make sure to keep these pages. Note that as proposed by Metaknowledge, all pages will be moved to the Appendix namespace in any case before being deleted, so that they can later be undeleted if the content is needed. Benwing2 (talk) 00:52, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I put there . Special template cannot be subst'd, so take care of them. About Zhuyin, there is no direct data in Unihan; it must be converted from pinyin. I do not update them yet. --Octahedron80 (talk) 02:07, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Which template(s) are you referring to? Benwing2 (talk) 03:56, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
 * You didn't see source code of the page, did you? --Octahedron80 (talk) 04:00, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I see that the source code references  but I'm not sure what you mean by "take care of them". Do you just mean to make sure to rename all of the subpages? Benwing2 (talk) 02:50, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
 * When you start to rename, these lists will automatically be gone one by one, that might make you miss some pages. --Octahedron80 (talk) 03:00, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
 * 1)  —Suzukaze-c (talk) 06:13, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * 2)  Thadh (talk) 08:03, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * : keeping the Cangjie index elsewhere, as a reverse index for the Cangjie input information already on individual-character pages. --Frigoris (talk) 09:13, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * EDIT the more important index for CJK seems to be the "Characters by Kangxi Radical" indices. I'd hate to see them go. Preferably they should be converted to an appendix, too. --Frigoris (talk) 11:38, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
 * , but somewhat begrudgingly. Some of the index pages right now are invaluable sources of redlinks, so perhaps some of them are worth temporarily preserving, perhaps in another namespace. Ideally, we'd have some form of automatic indexes that could replace our currently manually maintained ones and have more information than just the word itself (lemma categories only list the form), such as the part of speech (and inflection classes if applicable), but it seems nobody (not even me) is willing to take on the responsibility of running a system like that. That being said, most of the current index pages are outdated, largely useless and are a disservice to any readers looking for a complete list of words. &mdash; surjection &lang;??&rang; 10:58, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) . They're not even a decent source for redlinks (at least in the languages I work with). Ultimateria (talk) 15:59, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * 2) . Anything that people remotely want seems not to be a good match for the Index namespace anyway. Let's move them to appendices, fix categories, and harvest redlinks as needed. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:33, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * 3)  Fay Freak (talk) 22:40, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * 4) . If some index pages are useful, they can be kept as appendices. This is not an argument no to delete the "Index:" namespace. Indeed, index pages are worse than useless, because they are messy and not updated because not automated, for instance PUC's French index (see abstain below) hasn't been updated since 2018. Malku H₂n̥rés (talk) 07:36, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
 * 5)  — Fenakhay ( تكلم معاي · ما ساهمت ) 17:29, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
 * 6) . I don't see a very clear distinction between how the Index namespace was used and how the Appendix namespace is used. There are quite a few word lists in the Appendix namespace. So I support converting the useful indices to appendices. — Eru·tuon 18:38, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
 * , but is there any way to make the category listings more interesting? they're blandissimo. – Jberkel 18:59, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
 * 1)  per Metaknowledge. Imetsia (talk) 21:06, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
 * 2)  I think this was overtaken by categories long ago. There may be a few cleanup operations we could do (see talk page) but the category approach is smarter and better. Equinox ◑ 03:47, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
 * 3)  Did I understand this correctly: is this about, e.g. removing the "(index su)" in the page susanna? If so, I support, otherwise I abstain. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 20:13, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
 * It’s about deleting the Index pages itself, but those which you mentioned would go away as well: I think can remove those.  ·~   dictátor · mundꟾ  00:29, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, I can remove those and yes, those links should probably go away, otherwise they will be broken links. Potentially instead they could be changed to point to the appropriate portion of the category space; depends on what the various Finnish-language editors think. Pinging . BTW I am thinking I will snarf (a technical term ...) all the red links from the various index pages before deleting the pages, and put those red links somewhere in order to save them. Benwing2 (talk) 02:18, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm already planning to get rid of them entirely. &mdash; surjection &lang;??&rang; 09:49, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Nice. Based on what has been written above, I won't change my vote on this one. Mölli-Möllerö (talk) 10:49, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
 * 1)  —Mahāgaja · talk 15:29, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
 * 2)  The majority of my concerns seem to have been dealt with now. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 18:33, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
 * 3) .  ·~   dictátor · mundꟾ  00:29, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
 * 4)  — Svā rt ava   • 03:23, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Oppose

 * : While the deletion of our outdated and embarrassing indexes is certainly a laudable aim, I cannot countenance their deletion at the moment, as a few of them still contain useful content that isn't found elsewhere on Wiktionary. For instance, the function of Index:Mapudungun/Unified and Index:Mapudungun/Raguileo isn't currently replicated by the category system (this'd require the creation and population of Category:Raguileo Mapudungun spellings and Category:Unified Mapudungun spellings). If this issue gets resolved, I'll happily change my vote. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 11:55, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I've created Category:Unified Mapudungun spellings, but my point stands. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 12:50, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * , it's from 2012, so we really don't want to recreate it; we want to do better than that. It looks to me like our entries use something like, when they should be using (or similar). Maybe  would be willing to replace these. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:42, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * My implementation was never meant as more than as a stopgap. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 04:11, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I created for specifying the Mapudungun spelling on the headword line. I'll now fix the lemmas to use this. Benwing2 (talk) 02:44, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Done. Benwing2 (talk) 03:23, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Abstain

 * 1)  Per Hazarasp and Surjection. I support getting rid of it eventually, but I wonder if it's not a bit soon. I'm considering converting Index:French into a user page. PUC – 13:09, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * 2)  "Index" should be like the index (looking up key) of the dictionary, not list of words. Some languages, especially Chinese & Japanese, might have more than one way (A-Z) to lookup. At Thai Wiktionary, Index namespace is in use. So I cannot decide. Octahedron80 (talk) 04:27, 26 July 2021 (UTC)
 * He, the second way to look up we put right in the namespace in Semitic languages—Hebrew and Arabic roots are at times maintained even if totally fictitious because considered helpful. But I don’t know Thai. Fay Freak (talk) 03:33, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) . DonnanZ (talk) 10:08, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Decision
, what's the plan on executing the vote? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 04:11, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Passed: 19-0-3. Imetsia (talk) 00:18, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I suppose
 * making sure there are no lingering links to the Index namespace
 * moving the useful Index pages to appropriate titles
 * moving Index:* to Appendix:Index:* or Appendix:Index/* (?)
 * filing the ticket to drop the namespace
 * &mdash; surjection &lang;??&rang; 10:23, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
 * That's missing the step of mass-deleting the Appendix:Index: pages (while keeping the ones that anyone mentioned wanting)! But we can file the ticket as soon as the move is complete, of course. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:36, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
 * That is probably going to be the longest and most arduous part of the process and it'd probably make sense to have some sort of deadline for that after the page moves have been done. Finding any possible links still remaining should be the top priority now (I'm already working on getting rid of Template:Finnish index) &mdash; surjection &lang;??&rang; 20:03, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
 * What's the status on this? —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 21:48, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I can move the pages, but in my opinion the inbound links should be fixed first and I currently don't have the time to look into it in more detail &mdash; surjection &lang;??&rang; 10:09, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Pages have now been (or rather will be soon at the time of writing) moved, from Index:* to Appendix:Index/*. &mdash; surjection &lang;??&rang; 13:02, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I wonder if it would be better to move to Appendix:Index/ so that all the pages are subpages of one page. Not sure if that has benefits for pages that are going to be deleted though. We also need to move the index pages that we want to keep separately. (Or at least move them with all the others and then move them to their final resting place.) Probably they can just be moved to the Appendix namespace with no changes in their titles. — Eru·tuon 21:01, 31 August 2021 (UTC)


 * The various Chinese radical indexes were actually quite useful. I personally used the Hanja Index quite frequently, as I am currently learning Chinese characters, and was quite surprised when the bookmarked link opened to a deleted page. The Appendix:Index/Korean/Hanja simply doesn't replicate the original index's functionality. Most of the links are dead, and the radicals link to individual character definitions, rather than indexes of characters containing a particular radical. It would have been better if the decision to delete Indexes was made with individual languages in mind. It may well be that the decision was a correct one, for most languages; it certainly wasn't for Chinese, Korean and Japanese. --Хаеул (talk) 00:31, 17 October 2021 (UTC)