(Task motivated by the cloud VPS 2025 purge, for the record.)

@bd808 - Would you have any input on?

whether wikibase.world counts as “under Wikimedia control”… I believe it’s run by Wikimedians and hosted on Wikibase Cloud, a service by Wikimedia Deutschland

Looking at the log at Nova_Resource:Redirects it seems like you're likely to know about it.

for clarity Wikibase World is running on Google Cloud so I think there's a chance that maybe we would really want an interstitial in an idea world.

If so is there a Redirect like service that allows also injecting an interstitial with warning?

The redir1 redirect service long stopped working. I do not know why it stopped working.

I own wikibase.world. I am open to transferring control of the domain name.

Wikibase World is not Wikibase Registry at a new domain, but a different wiki that just happened to absorb the Registry's entire scope. This is the mapping between Wikibase Registry and Wikibase World: P49426 (the old redirect service implemented this mapping service).

In T415520#11553628, @Tarrow wrote:

for clarity Wikibase World is running on Google Cloud so I think there's a chance that maybe we would really want an interstitial in an idea world.

I think that yes a redirect from a wmflabs.org URL to a wikibase.world URL should pass through an interstitial letting folks know that they are crossing some privacy boarders. When the redirects are within WMCS hosted domains or to WMF hosted domains the user privacy change is either largely lateral (similar exposure risk) or improved (more restrictive privacy policy). The wikibase.world project links to the https://www.wikibase.cloud/privacy-policy privacy policy which is actually quite well documented, but it is never the less a service which is entirely out of the reach of Wikimedia Foundation SREs for privacy validation and enforcement.

If so is there a Redirect like service that allows also injecting an interstitial with warning?

I am not aware of a general purpose redirect with interstitial service in WMCS. We can probably figure out how to add this functionality to the Redirects project. It might be quicker to make a Toolforge tool for this specific redirect + interstitial use case and bounce users from wikibase-registry.wmflabs.org → Redirects service → interstitial tool → manual link click → wikibase.world. The Toolforge tool could be as simple as a single static page telling folks giving folks the direct link to wikibase.world with an explanation about the outside WMF control hosting reality.

In T415520#11554347, @Harej wrote:

The redir1 redirect service long stopped working. I do not know why it stopped working.

I resurrected it earlier today by booting it up and then (when one service inside failed) running sudo systemctl restart redirect-service.service; AFAICT it worked fine after that.

In T415520#11554433, @bd808 wrote:

I think that yes a redirect from a wmflabs.org URL to a wikibase.world URL should pass through an interstitial letting folks know that they are crossing some privacy boarders. When the redirects are within WMCS hosted domains or to WMF hosted domains the user privacy change is either largely lateral (similar exposure risk) or improved (more restrictive privacy policy). The wikibase.world project links to the https://www.wikibase.cloud/privacy-policy privacy policy which is actually quite well documented, but it is never the less a service which is entirely out of the reach of Wikimedia Foundation SREs for privacy validation and enforcement.

In that case, I guess Nova Resource:Redirects should say “Wikimedia Foundation control” so nobody else gets false hopes like I did?

Wikibase World is not Wikibase Registry at a new domain, but a different wiki that just happened to absorb the Registry's entire scope. This is the mapping between Wikibase Registry and Wikibase World: P49426 (the old redirect service implemented this mapping service).

Oh wow, I didn’t realize that the redirector applies a mapping and everything. (https://wikibase-registry.wmflabs.org/wiki/Item:Q3 redirects to https://wikibase.world/wiki/Item:Q56!) In that case I guess the redirects project alone definitely won’t work.

In T415520#11554433, @bd808 wrote:

It might be quicker to make a Toolforge tool for this specific redirect + interstitial use case and bounce users from wikibase-registry.wmflabs.org → Redirects service → interstitial tool → manual link click → wikibase.world. The Toolforge tool could be as simple as a single static page telling folks giving folks the direct link to wikibase.world with an explanation about the outside WMF control hosting reality.

I guess that’s the way to go, then – move the current code in /srv/redirect-service/app.py on redir1 (a little Flask app) into a Toolforge tool, enhance it with an interstitial that displays the new URL instead of redirecting to it, and then add that to WMCS redirects? (And the advantage compared to the status quo would be that the wikibase-registry WMCS project can be dropped, and Toolforge tools are generally lower on maintenance than WMCS instances.)

In T415520#11554522, @Lucas_Werkmeister_WMDE wrote:

In that case, I guess Nova Resource:Redirects should say “Wikimedia Foundation control” so nobody else gets false hopes like I did?

Fair point and now {{Done}}. I would be open to a larger discussion of this restriction to see if we can reasonably loosen it while still protecting users from unintentionally exposing their IP address or other PII to an arbitrary third-party. I would want to get WMF Legal involved in that discussion if it occurs.

Based on the 'Wikibase Cloud' tag assigned, is there some involvement expected from our team? I'm struggling to understand how we can support in all this. The only link to us is that wikibase.world is on Cloud.
All the rest seems to be WMF stuff.
@Lydia_Pintscher do you have some opinion?

Thinks @bd808! re @Anton.Kokh, FWIW “wikibase.world is on Cloud” is the only connection I saw, so feel free to untag yourself if you prefer.