[Distutils] A process for removal of PyPi entries

[Radomir Dopieralski]

Hello,

is there a defined process for removing useless entries from PyPi?

I was looking for a name for a new project, and as a part of that, I searched
on the Python Package Index to see if the names I came up with are not taken
already. I stumbled upon this:

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/fun/1.0.0

Please note that there is absolutely no information about this entry. There
is no way to contact the author and ask him if he would be willing to give
up that name, no website, not even a license or description. If you look into
the uploaded source code, you will see that it's just a "hello world" program.

That's not a problem for me, I just picked a different name for my package.
Even if I wanted to use that name, I could add a prefix or suffix to it, to make
it unique. But then I looked through the list of the entires and checked the
ones that had no description or their description was suspicious. Just with the
letter A I got:

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/42/0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Aaronyoungnester/1.4.0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/ABC/0.0.0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/abhi/2.0.0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/acme.sql/0.0.0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/affix/1.0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/agg2567/1.1.0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/agg2567/1.1.0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/airstream/0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/ajl_nester/1.1.0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/akali/1.3.0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/alexis/0.1
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/amoi/.lol.
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/aodag3/1.0.0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/arch/0.0.1
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/arounded/0.0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/AthleteClass/1.0.0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/athletelist/1.1.0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/athletelist_jw/1.0.0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/athletelistlogan/1.3.0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/atool/1.0.0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/awesomeness/0.0.1
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/aws-cli/0.0
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/ayame/0.0

All of those entries share some properties:

 * no author and no way to contact the author
 * no website, website offline or obviously not related (like google.com)
 * no description or meaningless description
 * no download url or uploaded code, or the code that is uploaded is just
   a "hello world" or similar exercise
 * no license

I think that all those properties, taken together, in practice mean that the
particular entry is completely useless both to the Python community and to its
author -- possibly being just an abandoned test. I also think that there should
be a defined process for requesting of removal of such entries -- so that an
actually useful project can take their place.

I understand that some of those entries are placeholders for projects that are
actively being worked upon, just not much is disclosed yet. In that case, they
could at least have an author contact information, a link to the repository or
an "development status: in planning" trove classifier. Those project would be
left alone.

An additional check that could be done on the PyPi side is whether the same
PuPi user has also some other entries that are perhaps more meaningful and
contain contact information. They could be then contacted and asked about the
status of their abandoned entries.

If such a process existed and was publicly announced in the PyPi documentation,
then there would be less work with this kind of maintenance, and no animosity
in case of a needed entry being removed -- people would know what to expect.

Thank you for all the good work on PyPi,


--
Radomir Dopieralski, http://sheep.art.pl