Hello all,

Quick update about the URL shortener: the feature is now live and included in the Query Service! Many thanks again to several developers and volunteers who worked on developing the feature and reporting issues :)

You can now create short URLs for the query (link/chain icon on the left menu of the interface) or directly to the result (once query as run, click on the text "link" on the right side of the screen).

As mentioned by Stas, please be aware that there is a limitation due to the security rate limit, so if you can't generate a short URL from the Query Service, try again after a few minutes.

The page on Meta to shorten a URL: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:UrlShortener

Documentation & discussions: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_URL_Shortener

Main ticket about the URL shortener: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T44085

Main ticket about the integration into the Query Service: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T112715

If you find bugs or issues, feel free to add comments or create new tasks on Phabricator.

Cheers,

Léa

On Wed, 3 Apr 2019 at 14:14, Léa Lacroix <lea.lacroix@wikimedia.de> wrote:

(apologies for crost-posting - feel free to share this announcement in your communities)

Hello all,
Having a service providing short links exclusively for the Wikimedia projects is a community request that came up regularly on Phabricator or in community discussions.
After a common work of developers from the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Germany, we are now able to provide such a feature, it will be enabled on April 11th on Meta.

What is the URL Shortener doing?

The Wikimedia URL Shortener is a feature that allows you to create short URLs for any page on projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, in order to reuse them elsewhere, for example on social networks or on wikis.
The feature can be accessed from Meta wiki on the special page m:Special:URLShortener (will be enabled on April 11th). On this page, you will be able to enter any web address from a service hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, to generate a short URL, and to copy it and reuse it anywhere.
The format of the URL is w.wiki/ followed by a string of letters and numbers. You can already test an example: w.wiki/3 redirects to wikimedia.org.

What are the limitations and security measures?

In order to assure the security of the links, and to avoid shortlinks pointing to external or dangerous websites, the URL shortener is restricted to services hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. This includes for example: all Wikimedia projects, Meta, Mediawiki, the Wikidata Query Service, Phabricator. (see the full list here)
In order to avoid abuse of the tool, there is a rate limit: logged-in users can create up to 50 links every 2 minutes, and the IPs are limited to 10 creations per 2 minutes.

Where will this feature be available?

In order to enforce the rate limit described above, the page Special:URLShortener will only be enabled on Meta. You can of course create links or redirects to this page from your home wiki.
The next step we’re working on is to integrate the feature directly in the interface of the Wikidata Query Service, where bit.ly is currently used to generate short links for the results of the queries. For now, you will have to copy and paste the link of your query in the Meta page.

Documentation and requests

If you have any question or requests, feel free to leave a comment under this Phabricator task
The user documentation is available here: please help us to translate it in your language!
See also the technical documentation of the extension

Thanks a lot to all the developers and volunteers who helped moving forward with this feature, and making it available today for everyone in the Wikimedia projects!
--
Léa Lacroix
Project Manager Community Communication for Wikidata

Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24
10963 Berlin
www.wikimedia.de

Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.

Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207.