rewrite rule: MediaWiki to static site

[petecooper]

Hello.
I'm diverting traffic from an retired MediaWiki site to an active static
site. I'm somewhat confused with the process of `rewrite`-ing old URLs with
a query string to standard URLs *without* a query string on the static site.
For clarity, I do not need or want query strings on the new site.

Retired URLs examples:

    https://example.com/wiki/index.php?title=en/Main_Page
    https://example.com/wiki/index.php?title=Glossary
    https://example.com/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Troubleshooting

New URLs examples:

    https://example.net/MainPage
    https://example.net/Glossary
    https://example.net/Troubleshooting

All the retired URLs are attached to `/wiki/index.php` with a single query
string.

There is no direct correlation between the old URLs and the new ones, and I
have a before-and-after list of URLs to put into a 200+ entry `rewrite`
list.

My question is two-fold:

1) Is it better (objectively) to have all the rewrite rules inside a
`location` referring to `/wiki/index.php` since the only non-Mediawiki URL
on the retired site is `/`?
2) How can I best build the `rewrite` list without using `if` or nested
`map`?

I am grateful for your time and attention, and I would very much appreciate
an example rewrite rule and/or some reading recommendations for `rewrite`
with query strings.

Thank you.

Posted at Nginx Forum: https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,280913,280913#msg-280913