Special:DeadendPages and Special:Lonelypages are kind of expensive to generate, so it would make sense to add them to $wgDisableQueryPageUpdate on commons if commons does not use them.

This would make it be like https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:LonelyPages where it is still there but no longer gets updated. Not exactly what this request is asking, personally I have always felt that if people don't like a specific page, then they can just not read it, but i guess other people feel differently.

I suppose that part of the request could be handled with $wgSpecialPages['Lonelypages'] = DisabledSpecialPage::getCallback( 'Lonelypages' )

There are several distinct concepts here:

• Disable the automatic process that updates the page. This is currently done on Wikidata for various special pages.
• Removing them from the list at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Editor%27s_index_to_Commons is of course not managed on Phabricator.
• Remove the page from the list at Special:SpecialPages. This is not currently done anywhere, and not supported without a patch to MediaWiki core.
• Block access to Special:LonelyPages entirely. This is what the code Bawolff suggested above could do here $wgSpecialPages['Lonelypages'] = DisabledSpecialPage::getCallback( 'Lonelypages' ).

Which of these concepts are you (and by extension the Commons community) actually asking to do?

Bawolff Great, thanks for providing this way of solving these two imo most important parts of this request.

Pppery pretty sure it's all of these points. As for Editor's index – the user initiating the discussion asked about removing it from that index page and will probably do so as nobody had any objections. Yes, a patch to MediaWiki to enable that would be good...maybe that patch could include a solution to point 1 and 4 so that one only has to conveniently disable it in one place without having to fiddle around with workaround code – maybe it should become a separate issue as enabling disabling Special pages like so is a broader subject (I thought this is already possible and think many other MediaWiki wikis don't have these special pages but maybe they implemented such workarounds or I'm wrong). That part may be the least important and most difficult to implement; however I think there probably is some easier solution for that like changing the CSS of that page to hide these two links.

I actually thought the DisabledSpecialPage thing would remove it from Special:SpecialPages, but i didnt test and dont really know.

and think many other MediaWiki wikis don't have these special pages

Im not aware of any wikis disabling them. Only wikidata disables updates while still keeping them around.

Probably it does. I was referring to doing that bullet point separately from the one below it as requiring a patch to core. I haven't tested either.

In T371662#10097594, @Bawolff wrote:

I actually thought the DisabledSpecialPage thing would remove it from Special:SpecialPages, but i didnt test and dont really know.

I tested it locally, and it indeed removes it from Special:SpecialPages.

But please note that DisabledSpecialPage::getCallback() takes an optional second parameter, which is a MediaWiki message that appears on the page. It has a default value, disabledspecialpage-disabled, but I think we could have a more informative message, which (a) explains why these special pages are useless on Commons, and (b) link to the consensus (since the messages will be Commons-specific, they can link to Commons pages).

I think if the first bullet point (disable updates) is done, all others should be done as well (also on Wikidata!): having special page with years-old entries is not only useless, but also actively misleading – likely many people don’t look at the latest update date, and just think that the listed pages (except for the few that have been linked to since the last update) are still lonely/orphaned.