The English-language Wikipedia currently has a template, [[Template:Derefer]], which links to an external website that then redirects to the target URL. It is useful because the method of redirection (the "meta" HTML element) strips the HTTP request of the referrer URL.
The template is currently transcluded only a few times, as it should be, but those few times are rather sensitive situations. One of the linked websites - Perverted Justice - redirects any URL referred by Wikipedia to an alleged "attack site" with outing information; this is the only that the website can be linked to in a manner that gives the actual website information, not the "attack site".
Anyways, I am concerned that the redirection page is an external website. It seems that it could be hijacked and redirected to a malicious web page.
So my question is: Would it be possible to set up and host such a page on the Wikipedia servers?
Thanks, --Iamunknown ([[User talk:Iamunknown]])
On 8/28/07, WikipediaEditor-Iamunknown iamunknown@gmail.com wrote:
So my question is: Would it be possible to set up and host such a page on the Wikipedia servers?
Probably. But the real question here is not whether such a thing is possible but whether it is desirable, which is not a question which is really within the scope of this list.
Perhaps this will help: http://anonym.to/?
It's a little bit of an inconvenience to have to copy and paste links into the address bar...
On 8/28/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/28/07, WikipediaEditor-Iamunknown iamunknown@gmail.com wrote:
So my question is: Would it be possible to set up and host such a page on the Wikipedia servers?
Probably. But the real question here is not whether such a thing is possible but whether it is desirable, which is not a question which is really within the scope of this list.
-- Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 8/28/07, Jonathan Yu jonathan.i.yu@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps this will help: http://anonym.to/?
It's a little bit of an inconvenience to have to copy and paste links into the address bar...
On 8/28/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/28/07, WikipediaEditor-Iamunknown iamunknown@gmail.com wrote:
So my question is: Would it be possible to set up and host such a page on the Wikipedia servers?
Probably. But the real question here is not whether such a thing is possible but whether it is desirable, which is not a question which is really within the scope of this list.
-- Stephen Bain
Jonathan: I'm not sure I understand. Are you referring to my links in this e-mail, or to the "dereferred" links? If the former, wikilinking is force of habit. :P If the latter, no one has to copy and paste links into the address bar. They merely click a link, are taken to a page which is not the actual target URL, which then redirects them automatically to the target URL (and in the process stripping the HTTP request of any referring URL data).
Stephen: Yes, I suppose that setting up the page would be trivially easy ... I didn't realize that there might be objections to setting it up. The template, Template:Derefer, has been around for more than a year now, but it isn't widely publicized.
I guess a more relevant question than "Can you do this?" is: Under what conditions will you [the developers] set up this page? After a clause is proposed at Wikipedia:External_links, advertised at the village pump, etc.?
Thanks, --Iamunknown ( User_talk:Iamunknown )
On 8/28/07, WikipediaEditor-Iamunknown iamunknown@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/28/07, Jonathan Yu jonathan.i.yu@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps this will help: http://anonym.to/?
It's a little bit of an inconvenience to have to copy and paste links into the address bar...
On 8/28/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/28/07, WikipediaEditor-Iamunknown iamunknown@gmail.com wrote:
So my question is: Would it be possible to set up and host such a page on the Wikipedia servers?
Probably. But the real question here is not whether such a thing is possible but whether it is desirable, which is not a question which is really within the scope of this list.
-- Stephen Bain
Jonathan: I'm not sure I understand. Are you referring to my links in this e-mail, or to the "dereferred" links? If the former, wikilinking is force of habit. :P If the latter, no one has to copy and paste links into the address bar. They merely click a link, are taken to a page which is not the actual target URL, which then redirects them automatically to the target URL (and in the process stripping the HTTP request of any referring URL data).
I was referring to the latter point -- if Wikipedia needs links that are "dereferred" - I suggest using a service like anonym.to, because that service is probably used by many sites and thus more difficult to block. If I am understanding the original e-mail correctly, they proposed a Wikipedia page to do "dereferring" - but the HTTP-Referer that would show up in the logs would be http://wikipedia.org, correct?
Whereas, with anonym.to, they wouldn't even be able to tell it originally came from Wikipedia...
Stephen: Yes, I suppose that setting up the page would be trivially easy ... I didn't realize that there might be objections to setting it up. The template, Template:Derefer, has been around for more than a year now, but it isn't widely publicized.
I guess a more relevant question than "Can you do this?" is: Under what conditions will you [the developers] set up this page? After a clause is proposed at Wikipedia:External_links, advertised at the village pump, etc.?
Thanks, --Iamunknown ( User_talk:Iamunknown )
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
(Sorry if this is a double post, I'm getting confused ;-p) Jonathan, I learned something new today about URL referers! I didn't realize that they were logged to the server in a public manner. In that case, I suppose maintaining Template:Derefer as it is -- using an external service -- is the best option.
Thanks, folks, and sorry for the trouble :-) --Iamunknown ( User_talk:Iamunknown )
On 8/28/07, Jonathan Yu jonathan.i.yu@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/28/07, WikipediaEditor-Iamunknown iamunknown@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/28/07, Jonathan Yu jonathan.i.yu@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps this will help: http://anonym.to/?
It's a little bit of an inconvenience to have to copy and paste links into the address bar...
On 8/28/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/28/07, WikipediaEditor-Iamunknown iamunknown@gmail.com wrote:
So my question is: Would it be possible to set up and host such a page on the Wikipedia servers?
Probably. But the real question here is not whether such a thing is possible but whether it is desirable, which is not a question which is really within the scope of this list.
-- Stephen Bain
Jonathan: I'm not sure I understand. Are you referring to my links in this e-mail, or to the "dereferred" links? If the former, wikilinking is force of habit. :P If the latter, no one has to copy and paste links into the address bar. They merely click a link, are taken to a page which is not the actual target URL, which then redirects them automatically to the target URL (and in the process stripping the HTTP request of any referring URL data).
I was referring to the latter point -- if Wikipedia needs links that are "dereferred" - I suggest using a service like anonym.to, because that service is probably used by many sites and thus more difficult to block. If I am understanding the original e-mail correctly, they proposed a Wikipedia page to do "dereferring" - but the HTTP-Referer that would show up in the logs would be http://wikipedia.org, correct?
Whereas, with anonym.to, they wouldn't even be able to tell it originally came from Wikipedia...
Stephen: Yes, I suppose that setting up the page would be trivially easy ... I didn't realize that there might be objections to setting it up. The template, Template:Derefer, has been around for more than a year now, but it isn't widely publicized.
I guess a more relevant question than "Can you do this?" is: Under what conditions will you [the developers] set up this page? After a clause is proposed at Wikipedia:External_links, advertised at the village pump, etc.?
Thanks, --Iamunknown ( User_talk:Iamunknown )
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 8/29/07, Jonathan Yu jonathan.i.yu@gmail.com wrote:
proposed a Wikipedia page to do "dereferring" - but the HTTP-Referer that would show up in the logs would be http://wikipedia.org, correct?
Hm? Meta redirects don't add the referer http header. At least not in my Firefox.
Bryan
Jonathan Yu wrote:
Whereas, with anonym.to, they wouldn't even be able to tell it originally came from Wikipedia...
Can someone please explain why this is important?
I've been running websites since 1993 and know perfectly well how the HTTP protocol works. I know what a referer is and what typical webserver logfiles look like. The referer URL is in there. If it is a Wikipedia URL, why is that bad? What is the problem we are trying to solve here? Please describe the scenario where this can be harmful.
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Please describe the scenario where this can be harmful.
This was in the original post but seems to have been lost somewhere in the discussion:
Iamunknown wrote:
Anyways, I am concerned that the redirection page is an external website. It
seems that it could be hijacked and redirected to a malicious web page.
Not sure how serious a worry this is, but there you have it.
Soo
On 29/08/2007, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
Can someone please explain why this is important? I've been running websites since 1993 and know perfectly well how the HTTP protocol works. I know what a referer is and what typical webserver logfiles look like. The referer URL is in there. If it is a Wikipedia URL, why is that bad? What is the problem we are trying to solve here? Please describe the scenario where this can be harmful.
perverted-justice.com is redirecting all hits referred from Wikipedia to an attack page. Nevertheless they're notable and their URL should be in their article.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
perverted-justice.com is redirecting all hits referred from Wikipedia to an attack page. Nevertheless they're notable and their URL should be in their article.
I wasn't aware of this. However, this is a people problem at the remote website, not a technical problem for Wikipedia. The obvious solution would be to redefine Template:Derefer so it puts <nowiki> around the remote URL, rather than linking.
There are many other websites where you cannot create deep links at all. For example you cannot link to information about a book at the Library of Congress catalog website. This too is a people problem at the remote site (because enabling deep links isn't really rocket science). So, you just don't link there.
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