Requests for comment/URL shortener service for Wikimedia

Proposal

 * Related bugs: 30861, 42085, 54459.
 * This relates to: wikidata:Wikidata:Project chat.

I'd like to propose a URL Shortening System (USS? :p) for all Mediawiki sites for improved QR code compatibility (54459). My proposal has several parts. As the table on the above link suggests, QR code complexity increases with the amount of data stored in it as one would expect.
 * https://developers.google.com/chart/infographics/docs/qr_codes

Version 1 is the simplest QR code variant with 21x21 ROWxCOL's. With high error correction this allows a total of 17 (30% correction)/27 (25% correction) alpha-numeric characters (0 to 9, A to Z, space, $ % * + - . / :). Version 2 25x25 with 34 (30% correction)/48 (25% correction).

Wiki article titles can be light years long so a shorter redirect would be helpful. However even something as simple as http://r.wikimedia.org/ has 13 characters to begin with leaving few characters. I don't know if enwp.org is under WMF control (42085 suggest it isn't) but hypothetically something like http://r.enwp.org/ would be 18 characters. The remaining characters would be used for the redirect itself. Mind that 30861 offered even shorter possibilities such as wmf.ly.

Each page on wikis have a page ID which is a decimal value. However these on some wikis can get fairly large. En.wp has about 40,600,000 pages for example. This can however be expressed in base 36 since QR codes will have to be alpha-numeric anyways. So instead of 8 base 10 digits same number would be expressed with 5 base 36 digits (O675S). 101,559,956,668,415 decimal values (15 numerals) can be expressed with 6 base 36 digits (ZZZZZZ).

Furthermore with an encoding of something like PLLCCCCCC 9 characters would be enough to determine the Project (Wikipedia, Wikinews, Wikisource, etc - 36 total projects), Language (en, fr, es, ru, etc - 36 * 36 = 1296 languages), Code-word for Article ID (36^6=2,176,782,336 possible IDs).

So... Possibly with http://r.enwp.org/PLLCCCCCC 27 characters would fit 25% correction version 1 scheme. Something like http://wmf.ly/PLLCCCCCC with 23 characters would allow 4 more characters in case the 9 character encoding becomes insufficient for some reason.

Once this is implemented perhaps WMUK's QRpedia may be easier to implement & integrate.

-- とある白い猫 chi? 03:56, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Discussion
Perhaps the next step would be integrating QR codes on every page - particularly for printed articles. -- とある白い猫 chi? 04:04, 23 September 2013 (UTC)