Wikipedia Zero/CRM

Requirements of the Wikipedia Zero customer relationship management portal for participating carriers are documented here.

Background

It's too hard for carriers to edit their own Wikipedia Zero configuration. They need simple-to-use forms that allow for no intervention by a Wikimedia Foundation employee for simple changes, and one-click intervention by a Wikimedia Foundation employee otherwise for changes such as source network IP address lists.

Technical Components

• Existing
  • META Zero: namespace configuration blobs
  • CentralAuth authentication system
  • Limn and other data analytics sources
• Future
  • TBD

Requirements

• Technical manager review of carrier-submitted changes
• Legal review of submitted carrier-submitted changes
• Data pre-validated as much as possible
• Forms are easy to use
• Access controlled configuraton submissions
• Access controlled analytics dashboards

Programmer Requirements

• Data normalization
• User experience
• Web 2.0 / JSON / Ajax
• Software security
• MediaWiki or other popular PHP CMS extension/plugin

Industry zero-rating

Carolynne Schloeder and Adam Baso from the Wikipedia Zero program talked with the folks at Facebook about public aspects of Wikipedia Zero and Facebook zero-rating and, to a minimal extent, Internet.org. The following is a work in progress, and doesn't imply any hard requirements yet.

Recommendation

• Jointly author an IETF RFC on zero-rating technical best practices, welcoming any others who wish to join in the discussion.
• Jointly establish an open source-licensed GitHub repo of carrier source IPs (only for closed deals) and service provider destination IPs, plus authoritative points of contact at service providers. Facebook may publicly share their groomed list of ~100 carriers in such a public repo, pending its internal review.
• Wikimedia Foundation tables consideration of entry into Internet.org co-marketing, not currently under discussion.
• Advocacy with the ITU, either alone or in partnership with other zero-rating service providers and carriers, is only attempted pursuant to Wikimedia Legal review of the landscape. UN IGF Dynamic Coalition on Net Neutrality discussions may impact US and European government adoption.

Notes

• We explained Wikimedia won't share web gateways, customer data, or stats like per-carrier pageviews. The folks at Facebook indicated they're in the same boat.
• We explained that Wikimedia won't market under Internet.org at this time, and the folks at Facebook, although interested to partner, understood that, too.
• We explained that Wikimedia arrangements aren't meant to be freemium (e.g., top-off bounties or customer data set sales), but rather free, and the folks at Facebook understood that.
• Facebook has migrated carriers from URL / Host: inspection to IP inspection instead based upon a small set of IP addresses, just like Wikimedia plans to do, due to a cutover to HTTPS.
• We discussed partnering on an OPEN technical best practices document (e.g., IETF RFC) and OPEN Git repo (probably GitHub) of carrier source and service provider destination IPs, plus authoritative points of contact at service providers.
• We discussed open sourcing into the Git repo the details of how proxied browsing services (Opera, Nokia, Microsoft, Google) work.
• Facebook has a team of carrier bizops people who operate their carrier portal and proactively groom the carrier IP databases based on open systems (ASN, whois, etc.) atop the IP addresses received from carriers at initial onboarding.