(Please pardon my not quoting earlier emails)
I think a URL shortener is a great idea if we can make it work right. We do need, however, to sort out our issues, e.g. the following list:
*Choice of domain name(s) (or a TLD) **Acquisition of domain name(s) **Registration of TLD (if applicable) **Maintenance and admin. of the above, including costs **Length of domain name/TLD *Implementation of URL shortening **Namespacing for projects/languages **Whether to encode pagenames/IDs/etc. **How to encode pagenames/IDs/etc.
I'm not particularly familiar with the process for TLDs, and I don't mind the choice of domain much as long as it's short, but I pondered Wikimedia URL shorteners one day and came up with the following system for a Wikimedia URL shortening service:
*The domain wi.ki (at 5 characters, it's among the shortest, and is very obvious despite the problematic "wiki" vs. "Wikimedia" confusion) *First, a base 64 encoded ID number for project and language. This has the advantage of fitting up to 4096 projects before needing three characters, and would allow some of the most heavily-used wikis to use only one character for their ID. One potential snag is that we would want to substitute other characters for "a" and "A" in this area so that the URL didn't start with http://wi.ki/a/ and confuse us with Wikia. *Next, a slash to separate the project number from the page number. *Next, a base 64 encoded revision ID. By using the revision ID to determine the target page, we get around the problem of page-moves, and we could add the option of adding a control character (e.g. +) at the end to make a permanent link to that particular revision, an option that many proposals don't allow for. *An ideal implementation would allow one to prepend a control character to use a transparent link.
Thus, we'd have links something like these: http://wi.ki/0/ZXh8g http://wi.ki/0/ZXh8g+ http://wi.ki/0/+Foobar
In the above examples, the first would go to [[w:en:Foobar]], the second to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Foobar&oldid=425598752 , and the third again to [[w:en:Foobar]] but in a more transparent way. "Foobar" might be a bad example, since the title itself is so short that encoding it doesn't save many characters.
Nihiltres
Nice ideas. For reference, here are the current usage options of enwp.org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tl-lomas/enwp.org
And here are a few ideas to extend that (in transparent ways): http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/137551#137551
Waldir
On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 8:22 PM, Nihiltres wiki.nihiltres@gmail.com wrote:
(Please pardon my not quoting earlier emails)
I think a URL shortener is a great idea if we can make it work right. We do need, however, to sort out our issues, e.g. the following list:
*Choice of domain name(s) (or a TLD) **Acquisition of domain name(s) **Registration of TLD (if applicable) **Maintenance and admin. of the above, including costs **Length of domain name/TLD *Implementation of URL shortening **Namespacing for projects/languages **Whether to encode pagenames/IDs/etc. **How to encode pagenames/IDs/etc.
I'm not particularly familiar with the process for TLDs, and I don't mind the choice of domain much as long as it's short, but I pondered Wikimedia URL shorteners one day and came up with the following system for a Wikimedia URL shortening service:
*The domain wi.ki (at 5 characters, it's among the shortest, and is very obvious despite the problematic "wiki" vs. "Wikimedia" confusion) *First, a base 64 encoded ID number for project and language. This has the advantage of fitting up to 4096 projects before needing three characters, and would allow some of the most heavily-used wikis to use only one character for their ID. One potential snag is that we would want to substitute other characters for "a" and "A" in this area so that the URL didn't start with http://wi.ki/a/ and confuse us with Wikia. *Next, a slash to separate the project number from the page number. *Next, a base 64 encoded revision ID. By using the revision ID to determine the target page, we get around the problem of page-moves, and we could add the option of adding a control character (e.g. +) at the end to make a permanent link to that particular revision, an option that many proposals don't allow for. *An ideal implementation would allow one to prepend a control character to use a transparent link.
Thus, we'd have links something like these: http://wi.ki/0/ZXh8g http://wi.ki/0/ZXh8g+ http://wi.ki/0/+Foobar
In the above examples, the first would go to [[w:en:Foobar]], the second to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Foobar&oldid=425598752 , and the third again to [[w:en:Foobar]] but in a more transparent way. "Foobar" might be a bad example, since the title itself is so short that encoding it doesn't save many characters.
Nihiltres
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