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Request Edits February 2021

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Hello. I’d like to propose the following changes to help improve the neutrality and sourcing in this article. I’m an employee of Cloudflare and I have a conflict of interest so it would be great if an independent editor could review them. Thanks for your consideration.

• Thank you for following good WP:COI practices. I don't have time today to make more than one change I did, but I will take a look another day. (And hopefully some other editors look in the meantime, too.) - Dyork (talk) 02:02, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

1.In the lead, please replace the first three sentences: Cloudflare, Inc. is an American web infrastructure and website security company, providing content delivery network services, DDoS mitigation, Internet security, and distributed domain name server services. Cloudflare's services sit between a website's visitor and the Cloudflare user's hosting provider, acting as a reverse proxy for websites. Cloudflare's headquarters are in San Francisco.

WITH:

Cloudflare, Inc. is an American web infrastructure and website security company that provides content delivery network services, DDoS mitigation, Internet security, and distributed domain name server services. Cloudflare's services sit between a website's visitor and the Cloudflare user's hosting provider, acting as a reverse proxy for websites. Cloudflare's headquarters are in San Francisco.

• Explanation: The language is virtually identical (corrects one grammar mistake), but updates the lead to include missing reliable sources. There are currently no sources in the lead.

•  Done: Replaced lead with your version. Itsquietuptown t • c 10:07, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

2. In the History section, please replace the first sentence: Cloudflare was created in 2009 by Matthew Prince, Lee Holloway, and Michelle Zatlyn.

WITH:

Cloudflare was created in 2009 by Matthew Prince, Lee Holloway, and Michelle Zatlyn, all three of whom previously worked on Project Honey Pot, an open-source project that monitored internet fraud and abuse. Cloudflare was launched at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in September 2010.

• Explanation: Replaces primary sources with secondary sources, and adds background details about co-founders’ history and company launch date, commensurate with articles about similar, large technology companies in the space such Amazon Web Services (B-Class article). Also in line with Wikipedia Good Article best practices for company articles such as Comverse Technology.

•  Done: did this. Boredathome101 (talk) 02:23, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

3. In the second paragraph of the History section, after this sentence: “Cloudflare has also reportedly absorbed attacks that have peaked over 400Gbit/s from an NTP Reflection attack.”

PLEASE ADD:

In June 2020, Cloudflare mitigated a DDoS attack that peaked at 754 million packets per second. As of 2020, Cloudflare provides DNS services to over 100,000 customers, covering more than 25 million internet properties.

• Explanation: Updates the article with one of the largest DDoS attacks ever handled by the company, and a reliable source to support the sentence. Adds information regarding scope of Cloudflare’s service base with supporting reliable news sources, commensurate with articles about similar, large technology companies such as Amazon Web Services#Customer base (B-class). Also in line with Wikipedia Good Article best practices for company articles that discuss the size/scope of the business such as Pixar and Yelp.

•  Done: did this. Boredathome101 (talk) 02:27, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

4. In the History section, please replace the first sentence in the third paragraph: “In 2014, Cloudflare introduced an effort called Project Galileo in response to cyberattacks against vulnerable online targets, such as artists, activists, journalists, and human rights groups. Project Galileo provides such groups with free services to protect their websites. In 2019, Cloudflare announced that 600 users and organizations were participating in the project.”

WITH:

In 2014, Cloudflare launched Project Galileo, an initiative providing free services to protect artists, activists, journalists, and human rights groups from cyber attacks. More than 1,000 users and organizations were participating in Project Galileo as of 2020.

• Explanation: Rewrites paragraph for clarity and grammar, and updates participant number for Project Galileo. Adds reliable sourcing to each statement.

•  Done: did this. Boredathome101 (talk) 04:08, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

5. In the History section, after the third paragraph that starts “In 2014, Cloudflare introduced an effort called Project Galileo…”

PLEASE ADD A NEW FOURTH PARAGRAPH:

Cloudflare created the Athenian Project in 2017 to ensure free protection of online election infrastructures to local and state governments, as well as domestic and foreign political campaigns.

• Explanation: Updates History section to include a notable event in the company’s history supported by prominent reliable sources such as CNBC and Fast Company.

•  Done: Added but the location had to be a bit higher up to keep chronological order. Boredathome101 (talk) 04:11, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

6. In the History section, please replace the last paragraph: In 2020, co-founder and COO Michelle Zatlyn was named president, making her one of few women serving as President of a publicly traded technology company in the United States.

WITH:

In 2020, co-founder and COO Michelle Zatlyn was named president of Cloudflare, making her one of few women leading a publicly traded technology company in the United States.

• Explanation: Slightly rewrites the sentence for clarity, and eliminates repetition of the Fast Company source.

•  Done - Adjusted the sentence to remove the redundant source. Did not add "of Cloudflare" as that seems redundant since this is the Cloudflare article. - Dyork (talk) 02:02, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

7. In the History section, as the new last paragraph, please add:

In January 2021, the company established the Project Fair Shot initiative, a free tool that enables global health organizations to maintain a digital queue for COVID-19 vaccinations.

• Explanation:: Updates article with the most recent company news, with supporting reliable source.

•  Done: did this. Boredathome101 (talk) 04:14, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

8. Move the Acquisitions section to be after the History section:

• Eager Platform Co. (December 2016)
• Neumob (November 2017)
• S2 Systems (January 2020)
• Linc (December 2020)

AND REPLACE THE CONTENT WITH:

Cloudflare acquired StopTheHacker, an anti-malware firm, in 2014. In December 2016, Cloudflare acquired Eager Platform, a company that created a platform for drag-and-drop installation of apps. The company acquired mobile VPN startup Neumob in 2017. In 2020, Cloudflare acquired S2, a company that develops browser isolation technology, and Linc, an automation platform.

• Explanation: Detailing major acquisitions in the History section with a separate date and description for each is a standard practice on similar large technology companies such as Juniper Networks. Adds missing StopTheHacker acquisition. Replaces press releases with reliable sourcing such as San Francisco Business Times, The Wall Street Journal and VentureBeat.

•  Done: but partially. Moved it up, used teh better sources, but left in bullet point list...much better that way. It would be be issue if the list of acquisitions grows, so it's much easily readable this way. Boredathome101 (talk) 04:22, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your consideration.Ryanknight24 (talk) 18:37, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

@Itsquietuptown: @Dyork: Thank you for beginning the review of my Feb 2021 Requested Edits for Cloudflare at Talk:Cloudflare. As there are still a number of unreviewed requests, I’d like to see if you might have time to take another look.

Thank you! Ryanknight24 (talk) 01:20, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

The following Request Edits have not yet been reviewed #2, #3, #4, #5, #7, #8, as of April 5, 2021. Thank you. Ryanknight24 (talk) 02:08, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

References

Request Edits May 2021

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Hello. I’d like to propose the following changes to help improve the neutrality and sourcing in this article. I’m an employee of Cloudflare and I have a conflict of interest so it would be great if an independent editor could review them, as explained on the Contact Us page for WIkipedia. Thanks for your consideration.

1. At the bottom of the “Products” section, after the “Pages” subsection.

PLEASE ADD A NEW SUB-SECTION.

---

VPNs The company offers a VPN called “WARP” that it says is for non-technical users. But unlike a standard VPN, the user does not get to choose their endpoint region. An ISP can’t monitor traffic that goes through the VPN. The WARP VPN cannot be used to access geo-restricted content.

Explanation: This product has been covered in mainstream media outlets because it’s a popular consumer product.

• COMMENT Adding a product might be too promotional, unless it has massive news coverage. If you can share maybe 5 more news sources about it, then I may review and reconsider. I will also let others to chime in. Boredathome101 (talk)

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2. In the Products section, subsection DDoS, please delete the second paragraph:

On September 6, 2019, Wikipedia became the victim of a DDoS attack. European users were unable to access Wikipedia for several hours. The attack was mitigated after Wikimedia network engineers used Cloudflare's network and DDoS protection services to re-route and filter internet traffic. The specific Cloudflare product used was Magic Transit.

AND MOVE TO THE SECOND TO FINAL PARAGRAPH OF THE HISTORY SECTION, WHERE IT BELONGS.

Explanation: This info is not a description of the product so belongs in History, not the Product /DDoS section. It also replaces two primary sources with reliable secondary sources and removes the sentence with only a primary source (Cloudflare blog).

•  Done: this part is done. Boredathome101 (talk) 19:48, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

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3. Under “Products”, in the “Workers” subsection, at the end of the first sentence: In 2017 Cloudflare launched Cloudflare Workers….”.

ADD A REFERENCE TO THE SAME SENTENCE:

In 2017 Cloudflare launched Cloudflare Workers, a serverless computing platform that allows one to create entirely new applications or augment existing ones without configuring or maintaining infrastructure. Since then, the product has expanded to include Workers KV, a low-latency key-value data store, Cron Triggers for scheduling cron jobs, and additional tooling for developers to deploy and scale their code across the globe.

Explanation: Sentence is identical but added a reliable source. Currently has no source.

•  Done: However, do you have additional sources that you can provide. We should make sure this is a popular product. Boredathome101 (talk) 19:53, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

---

4. Under “Product” in the “Pages” subsection:

ADD

The following reference to the end of the paragraph:

The product is a Jamstack platform for front end developers to collaborate and deploy websites on Cloudflare's infrastructure of 200+ data centers worldwide.

Explanation: The sentences in question didn’t have a reference. Adds reliable source.

•  Done: complete.Boredathome101 (talk) 19:56, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

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5. In the Security and Privacy Issues section, please move the entire third paragraph,

Cloudflare is cited in reports by The Spamhaus Project, an international spam tracking organization, due to high numbers of cybercriminal botnet operations 'hosted' on Cloudflare services. An October 2015 report found that Cloudflare provisioned 40% of SSL certificates used by phishing sites with deceptive domain names resembling those of banks and payment processors.

TO THE HISTORY SECTION after the paragraph starting with “Cloudflare is cited in reports…” and ending with “... resembling those of banks and payment processors.”

Explanation: This will put the events noted in the Security and privacy issues section in chronological order.

 Not done. It's quite reasonable to lump the SSL certificate issuance with a section regarding security issues. It seems to be better placed here in that section than in the history section. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 04:10, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

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6. In the Security and Privacy Issues section, in the paragraph starting “In May 2017, ProPublica….”,

AFTER the first sentence, please ADD:

Since early 2015, the disclaimer on Cloudflare’s complaint form stated that they “will notify the site owner”.

THEN, AFTER THIS EXISTING SENTENCE IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH: “Cloudflare's general counsel defended the company's policies by saying it is "base constitutional law that people can face their accusers".”

Please ADD:

Kramer said some of those “attacking Cloudflare’s customers had their own questionable motives.”

 Partly done ProPublica itself notes that the disclaimer exists in the same sentence that it says most people didn't know the info would be passed on, so it seems WP:DUE to include the content. The CNET source really doesn't do any original reporting, so it doesn't add much weight on its own, but it also support. I don't think the questionable motives is WP:DUE; it's super vague and it doesn't add much of value here. The syndicated source published in SCMP also contains advice from the CEO that I have added. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 04:10, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

---

ADDITIONALLY, AFTER THIS SENTENCE: “In response to the report, Cloudflare updated their abuse reporting process to provide greater control over who is notified of the complaining party.”

Please ADD:

Specifically, the complaint form now allows individuals to let Cloudflare know if they do not want their information shared.

Explanation: The additional information, most from the ProPublica article, helps to better explain Cloudflare’s position, as per WP: VALID. It’s a different point of view on what happened documented in the same source. The last sentence provides significant additional information to understand the resolution of this contentious issue.

 Not done. I don't understand the application of WP:VALID here; there doesn't appear to be a weight concern that the suggested sentence would reasonably fix. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 04:10, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

---

7. In the Security and Privacy Issues section, fifth paragraph, please DELETE: On March 9, 2021, Tillie Kottmann from the hacking collective "Advanced Persistent Threat 69420" revealed to Bloomberg News that the group had gotten root shell access to Cloudflare headquarters' internal network due to a security failure in the company's camera system.

Explanation: This sentence is a complete misrepresentation of the source. The article is about hackers breaching a video camera access platform for the company Verdaka. Cloudflare was one of the companies affected -- they explained in the article it only involved a handful of cameras in closed offices, which they then disconnected. The root access refers to Verdaka, not Cloudflare. This is a relatively insignificant event in the history of Cloudflare. If the decision is not to delete it, here is an accurate summarization of the source as it applies to Cloudflare:

On March 9, 2021, the hacking collective "Advanced Persistent Threat 69420" said that the group had gain root shell access to security camera data collected by the SIlicon Valley start-up Verdaka. One of the affected companies was Cloudflare. Cloudflare said the cameras were located in a small number of offices that had been closed for months; it turned off and disconnected the cameras.

 Partly done. See request number 8 for details. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 04:43, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

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8. In the Security and Privacy Issues section, in the last paragraph, please delete the second sentence to the end of the paragraph: This meant that they had complete access to run any commands on the network. The group also accessed video feeds from company cameras monitoring entry points and thoroughfares. Cloudflare confirmed these claims in a blog post, but disputed that the hackers would have been able to access the company's data centers from the corporate network. They also denied Kottmann's claims that they would have been able to access CEO Matthew Prince's laptop from the compromised network, stating that he was out of the office at the time.

Explanation: This is all sourced to a company blog, not a WP:RS.

 Partly done. I agree that there was misrepresentation of the Bloomberg source that's WP:SYNTH-y. However, I don't think that this should be deleted wholesale; self-published sources can be used for uncontroversial self-descriptions and there are also a large number of sources about this that aren't self-published. I've made some edits to better reflect a summary of sources in the area. They don't take the form of these edits, but they addressed that the section needed to be reworked. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 04:43, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

---

9. In the Security and Privacy Issues section, fourth paragraph, please DELETE:

Cloudflare suffered a major outage on July 2, 2019, which rendered more than 12 million websites (80% of all customers) unreachable for 27 minutes. A similar outage occurred on July 17, 2020, causing a similar effect and impacting approximately the same number of sites.

Explanation: This does not relate to security or privacy, so does not belong in this section. Doesn’t seem important enough to move the History Section. If it is moved, then this sentence within the paragraph needs to be DELETED:

“A similar outage occurred on July 17, 2020, causing a similar effect and impacting approximately the same number of sites.” because the first source, The Daily Express, can’t be used on Wikipedia WP: Perennial and the second source does not actually support this sentence - it just says there was an outage. 

 Not done The Daily Express is not deprecated, and it seems to be fine in this case where its ordinary reporting is being used to support the non-WP:REDFLAG fact that a website experienced an outage (especially where other sources are reporting the same thing). The CIA Triad, which is key to InfoSec, also includes availability. So, I don't think it needs to be deleted. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 04:49, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your consideration. Ryanknight24 (talk) 20:32, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

@Boredathome101: Thank you for beginning the review. I will provide more sources for Requests #1 and #3, as requested in a separate message. Thought I’d ask if you have time to review more of the requests? Many thanks for your independent review. Ryanknight24 (talk) 22:16, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi, this review is still incomplete. Requests #1 and 5-9 are not reviewed.

Re: the request of User:Boredathome101 for #1 and #3, I have provided additional sources, as asked. I would just note that each statement in an article does not need to meet the WP: General Notability Guideline. Citing to one high-quality reliable source is generally the best practice. Analogous WP:GA articles include Paxata and Juniper Networks (please see the software sections).

Re #1: Here are more media sources for the Warp VPN, in addition to”:

• Techcrunch[1], Techworm[2], Slashgear[3] , Cult of Mac [4]. Fossbytes[5], Fast Company[6], SunStar[7]]

Re #3 Here are more media sources for Workers Unbound: TechCrunch[8]. HelpNetSecurity[9], DevClass[10], IT Pro Today[11], VentureBeat[12], IT Wire[13], SD Times[14], Forbes[15]

Thank you Ryanknight24 (talk) 17:50, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Further Discussion for Proposals June 2021

User: Mikehawk10 and User:Boredathome101 answered some Request Edit Proposal. above. For a couple, I’d very much appreciate it if there could be a bit of discussion between editors. The first one has still not yet been evaluated at all. As disclosed above, I have a COI because I work for Cloudflare. I’ve repeated the requests below.

First Request

In my former Request #9, I asked that in the Security and Privacy Issues section, fourth paragraph, be deleted detailing outages. Since then five more outages have been added in the same paragraph. Looking at the history of repeated and frequent outages of all ISPs (not just Cloudflare) across the globe, number and frequency of outages, these appear to be routine events and therefore including every one of them seems to be WP:MILL. These common events are WP:NOTNEWS. Perhaps if any outages were especially notable for its duration or extent, then its inclusion could be warranted. As it is, listing every outage is not encyclopedic -- not every routine news event can appear. And, these sources do not say the outages are related to security and privacy -- that’s an interpretation not present in the sources, so I don’t think these would be in this section in any case. Most of these sources are not allowable in any case:

July 2, 2019 blog post from Cloudflare, supporting the second half of the first sentence.  WP: Primary

July 17, 2020 outage: The Daily Express is listed under WP:RSP as an untrustworthy source. (WP:DAILYEXPRESS), to be considered the same as WP:DailyMail a deprecated source. It should be removed (there are two sources for this outage but the second source has no details, so the whole second sentence should be removed. The reporting , whether straightforward or not, is considered by Wikipedia to be inherently untrustworthy. April 1, 2020: Thousand eyes is a blog from Cisco and not allowable as a commercial vendor primary source. WP: Primary May 3, 2021 Thousand eyes again.

Cloudflare suffered a major outage on July 2, 2019, which rendered more than 12 million websites (80% of all Cloudflare's customers) unreachable for 27 minutes. A similar outage occurred on July 17, 2020, with similar effect and impacting approximately the same number of sites. Other notable outages occurred on June 24, 2019 (two hours and twenty-seven minutes), April 1, 2020 (five hours and five minutes), August 30, 2020 (four hours and fifty-five minutes), May 3, 2021 (two hours) and June 11, 2021 (one hour and five minutes).

I agree that this paragraph on outages is, at a minimum, misplaced and likely unnecessary. There is no coverage from the mainstream press on these routine issues. Outages can be notable; The 8 June Fastly outage is an example. Based on the citations included, I see nothing that rises to that level here. ~Kvng (talk) 14:47, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Second Request In Request 5, I requested the entire third paragraph In the “Security and Privacy” Issues section, be moved to History. MikeHawk101 declined. His reason seems appropriate as to not moving it, but on second review, some of the sources can’t be used because they are blogs for commercial vendors. The second source of the first sentence is a blog from a commercial vendor. The only source for the second sentence is a blog from a commercial vendor. The others are primary, but from a reputable organization (Spamhaus), so can be used with caution and not in a way that requires analysis. In this case, I suggest specifying the exact year and exact language of the most recent referenced report, which is issued every quarter, instead of making a broader interpretive statement across multiple years. I failed to find secondary sources that report on it and Cloudflare specifically, which would be preferable.

This would be deleted:

Cloudflare is cited in reports by The Spamhaus Project, an international spam tracking organization, for the high numbers of cybercriminal botnet operations hosted by Cloudflare. An October 2015 report found that Cloudflare provisioned 40% of the SSL certificates used by typosquatting phishing sites, which use deceptive domain names resembling those of banks and payment processors to compromise Internet users' banking and other transactions.

And instead, this would be inserted:

Cloudflare is cited in the Q1 2021 report by The Spamhaus Project, an international spam tracking organization, ranking it fourth among networks with the most newly observed Botnet#Command and control protocols, sometimes used by cybercriminals to control malware-infected machines.

The second sentence needs to be entirely deleted because it only has a commercial blog as a source:

An October 2015 report found that Cloudflare provisioned 40% of SSL certificates used by phishing sites with deceptive domain names resembling those of banks and payment processors.

Third Request

I proposed a new VPN product be added to the article in the “Products” section. It was added to the “History” section, paragraph five. I still think it properly belongs in the Products section as a new sub-section, with the sub-title “VPN”. I think a tiny description of what this product does will be helpful to less technically savvy readers, so I propose adding one additional sentence whether kept where it is or moved. .

The “History “language I propose moving is:

On April 1, 2019, Cloudflare announced a new freemium VPN service named WARP. The service would initially be available through the 1.1.1.1 mobile apps with a desktop app available later. On September 25, 2019, Cloudflare released WARP to the public. The beta for macOS and Windows was announced on April 1, 2020.

My proposed new language at the bottom of Products is to create the sub-section “VPN” and add this as the last sentence to the complete paragraph moved from History:

WARP is for non-technical users and does not allow the user to choose their endpoint region or access geo-restricted content.

Note that on4 June 2021, we provided seven additional sources, aside from those above in History and the new sentences, that discuss the new VPN product to show that it is significant. Techcrunch, Techworm, Slashgear, Cult of Mac, Fossbytes, Fast Company, Sunstar

Thank you. Ryanknight24 (talk) 22:54, 21 June 2021 (UTC)