Some random works and their indices:
- LightNovel.Itsuka Tenma No Kuro Usagi — Light Novels, Anime of the 2010s
- Film.Wolf Creek — Series.One Hundred Scariest Movie Moments, Australian Movies, Roger Ebert Most Hated Film List, Slasher Movie, Films of 2005–2009, Horror Films
- VideoGame.Castlevania Judgment — Creator.Eighting Raizing, Franchise.Castlevania, Horror Video Games, Creator.Konami, TurnOfTheMillennium.Video Games, Fighting Game, ImageSource.Video Games
- VideoGame.La Pucelle — Strategy RPG, Creator.Nippon Ichi, UsefulNotes.Play Station Portable, UsefulNotes.Play Station 2, TurnOfTheMillennium.Video Games
- Creator.Toshihiko Masuda — Animators, Creator.TMS Entertainment
- Series.Hellcats — Short-Runners, Series of the 2010s, Dramedy, American Series
...Yeah, most of those aren't things I'd expect to use. Some of them I question being indices
Have you ever used the index? If so, what for?
No, the other one.
I sometimes use them to search for stuff if I'm not sure about the name but will likely recognise it if I see it.
Check out my fanfiction!
Different indices serve different purposes. For most work pages, you're probably right that the center link, to the index itself, is more valuable than the previous/next links—the idea is to have a section where all the categories the work fits into are displayed and linked to. The previous/next links might be extraneous in that scenario, but there's no reason not to have them; having a tool that behaves consistently is more important.
For Recap pages, the previous/next links are important for quickly browsing from one episode to the next.
Personally, I like the Image Source indices. If a work I enjoy decorates several trope pages, I think it's fun to click through them all and see what screenshots or comic panels were chosen for those tropes.
For me the Previous/Next links in the index section for work pages is pointless because it will just display other unrelated works which happen to be alphabetically close on some index list. As a general question, how often do you actual use the index function? Perhaps if this was made more relevant, it could actually serve some purpose. Can we have a discussion around the usefulness of this tool?