Here IABot added a dead link template within <nowiki> tags.
Since as far as I can see there is no valid use case for <nowiki> within references and it is probably quite rare, there is no harm in IABot doing this, since the resolution would be to remove the <nowiki> from the reference and use a proper template/formatting instead.
However, if there is some improvement in the detection of link environments (e.g. through fixing T193345, T193941), this case might as well be caught. IABot could also leave a short warning message in the edit summary to show that it was aware that the reference was mal-formatted.