Requests for comment/URL shortener

This is a request for comment about implementing a URL shortener service for use by Wikimedia projects (42085).

Background
A URL shortener is a service that takes long URLs (such as ) and shortens them in terms of number of characters needed to represent that URL.

There are generally two types of URL shorteners:


 * 1) http://enwp.org/foo and http://youtu.be/foo kind that do direct expansion of the URL; and
 * 2) http://bit.ly/foo kind that convert a hash or shortened version into a longer form of the URL.

Both of these implementations generally use HTTP 301 server-side redirects.[citation needed?]

Traditionally these types of links have only been needed on external social media services that have arbitrary character limits, such as Twitter. However, the need for their use in other contexts is allegedly expanded (see below).

It's also important to note that many wikis block URL shorteners as they're a spam vector (this very page can't have links to youtu.be, for example).

Use-cases

 * Links in Echo notifications that are e-mailed or broadcast via XMPP
 * Links to fundraiser landing pages that are posted to social media or sent via email
 * URL sharing via the Mobile App
 * File sharing from Commons
 * For use by the Wikimedia Foundation Communications Department

Considerations
Currently there is Extension:ShortUrl, but the URLs generated by this extension are still limited by the length of our domain names.

Domain
The main thing we need is a short domain name. This would most likely have to be donated to us since short domain names aren't cheap. It would be best to use some sort of subdomain or path scheme to make it usable for all Wikimedia Foundation projects:

e.g. lang.abbrev-site. .org/ or abbrev-site. .org/lang/ or .org/abbrev-site/lang/


 * w.org (exists, for sale)
 * w.co (available)
 * w.ly (exists, unavailable)
 * wmf.org (exists, unavailable)
 * wmf.co (exists, for sale)
 * wmf.ly (available)
 * wi.ki (exists, for sale?)
 * w.mf (available)

Maintenance
Who's going to maintain this service for the indefinite future? Is the Wikimedia Foundation willing to maintain this service forever? If so, who within the Foundation will be in charge of maintenance?

Plan

 * 42085
 * Simply set up lilurl? Is more needed?