Querying contributions over API seems to have become quite hard for the databases at Wikimedia Commons.
(internal_api_error_DBQueryError): [952da8bcb8ea627656e95b2e] Database query error
I have a script for that checks eligibility and requests 76 edits before a given date. The request looks like this:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=usercontribs&ucuser=Rillke&ucstart=2016-01-01T00%3A00%3A00Z&uclimit=76&ucprop=
action: usercontribs,
ucuser: <user name>,
ucstart: 2016-01-01T00%3A00%3A00Z,
uclimit: 76,
ucprop:<empty because unimportant>
My tool's error report page (users have the option to retry, or to report the issue) suggests some users facing into this issue. When users choose to retry, it usually works, although still slow (I assume some kind of caching in the DB).
If you can't reproduce, take another user name.
The response time is also quite high, as I would assume there's an index on the timestamp.
Is there any way I could improve the API query so my users get a better experience?