Here is a screenshot of my false positives. It always times out for me between 4-10 seconds regardless of what I do. This has been going on for the past two weeks.

Experiencing the same issue as first reported here on Meta

Looking at the existing output from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/InternetArchiveBot it looks like some very very very large queue in alphabetical order was executed that is basically preventing almost anything else from being processed.

Is there a way to see if that is the case, or if a way exists to stop it?

A false positive occurred when I attempted to archive links on the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMNY page. I tried to archive all links using this tool multiple times over the past week. Every time, the tool timed out for me after less than 10 seconds (usually within 5 seconds) without analyzing a single link. I have tried this on multiple pages with the same results.

In T321740#8354842, @Nathan_Obral wrote:

Looking at the existing output from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/InternetArchiveBot it looks like some very very very large queue in alphabetical order was executed that is basically preventing almost anything else from being processed.

Is there a way to see if that is the case, or if a way exists to stop it?

The automated queue system shouldn't stop individual page runs from working. But I would hazard a guess that is the problem: some change is prioritising queued requests.

I got the same issue with a few other articles: ticked box, 4-5 second wait, no edits. Looking at my user log, it dates back to at least 21 October. Also doesn't work when I submit them as a job (11250, 11251, 11252, 11253). Of the last 100 submissions I made, nr. 1 to 14 haven't been done.

On a hunch, I tested the tool on a user sandbox that contains 3 references in plain markup and 3 references in CS1 templates. The tool only seems to have detected the plain markup references.

And now the IABot page says "Error encountered while creating the database". Is it because they are fixing it with regards to this or is it really gone?

This bug was discussed at the online meetup of Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand today. Thr group sends its support and encouragement to those who maintain the tool. We have keen users of IABot in our group, and are anxious to see it functioning correctly again. :)

So this attached image (h/t @Chlod from the Wikipedia Discord) was mentioned on the bot talk page on WikiMedia proper but AFAIK has not been on the actual ticket here. IMO this is a VERY critical problem. Either it's a major database cache issue on InternetArchive's end, IA's databases ran out of space, or something altogether different.

By the way, the bot was apparently re-enabled but still fails to work as intended outside of refs outside of CS1 templates, as @Epicgenius noticed with this execution of the bot. To be quite frank, the bot should be disabled entirely until this issue is finally identified and fixed.

For the record, I just executed the bot on a page I knew had bare URL refs; six were archived. Four were converted to a CS1 template, while two had the Webarchive template appended to them.

So almost 1 month later, the issue still persists with no resolution. I saw the UI was disabled last week for couple of days, but it didn't even resolve this issue when it came back which is abnormal as downtime normally would resolve the issues. What exactly is going on? Any updates please.

Expanded on from the IABot talk page section on Wikimedia, which itself has gone fallow with no updates:

It’s been a full month since the bot stopped working properly and failing to archive refs in CS1 templates. Multiple users have significant backlogs of pages to archive and it is affecting page reviews. The bot is technically broken and not working in the way I, or other users, are expecting it to. I do not want to have to manually archive over 1,000 refs on my own end (as my work tends to have anywhere from 100 to 200 refs!). An update or even an acknowledgment of the problem itself would be appreciated. That neither has happened is quite concerning and increasingly upsetting to multiple editors, including myself.

I will be preparing a request at the Village Pump, as it is possible that some conflict with the CS1 templates is causing this failure, and some sort of troubleshooting needs to actually be done here.

Edit: I did not notice it was moved in priority while typing this out.

I am sorry for the delay as we needed to track down the underlying issue. What is happening is that our system for identifying templates is growing unexpectedly large in size, and this causes the interface to break down. First we need to identify the source of this "leak," and then we need to clear out our template database. The interface will remain unavailable while we work on this.

In T321740#8411252, @Harej wrote:

I am sorry for the delay as we needed to track down the underlying issue. What is happening is that our system for identifying templates is growing unexpectedly large in size, and this causes the interface to break down. First we need to identify the source of this "leak," and then we need to clear out our template database. The interface will remain unavailable while we work on this.

I appreciate this update. :)

So I understand, is this specifically an IA issue interpreting links within the Wiki CS1 templates? Or is it the other way around?

It's specifically an issue with IABot's code and not related to the wiki templates. Basically we are identifying way too many templates as potential citation templates when they are not related.

Looks like it partially works. How far along is it being fixed fully?

This valuable tool has not been working for almost 6 weeks. Perhaps there is a need for escalation to get additional help for solving the problem ? What is the escalation path ?

Works fine for bare refs but templated ones pass by it now. I dare say it is getting worked on. Glad I don't have to fix it. Be good when it's back.

In T321740#8436496, @Marshelec wrote:

This valuable tool has not been working for almost 6 weeks. Perhaps there is a need for escalation to get additional help for solving the problem ? What is the escalation path ?

An update was provided above.

It will soon be 2 months since this problem with IABot was first raised. Can we have an update on progress please ?

The bot is still broken on enwiki after more than two months. Even if the problem hasn’t been worked on, a status update or a mere acknowledgment that the problem exists would be quite helpful. This continued radio silence is honestly very unacceptable and I am profoundly disappointed in this repeated failure by the maintenance team to communicate. Even if the bot was somehow fixed I wouldn’t want to run it.

I second this request for a further update/acknowledgement, though I wouldn't go as far as to say I wouldn't use the bot even if it was fixed – I'm actually kind of desperate to use it to help get an article to FAC, along with using it at other pages. But yeah, a bit more noise would be great, even if there's not a lot of progress – thanks.

Thirding the request for an update. Many users use this bot daily (or used to!) and it is an important part of the Wiki's long term sustainability. Let us know if there is a timeline for fixing this issue. Thank you.

Hey guys, sorry for the silence. I've been trying to get at the root of the issue which is not an easy thing to do since the culprit is being caused by an over-ingested amount of data in the bot's configuration when it comes to handling CS1 templates. Since this has been dragging on for so long, I am instead now putting in a work-around which will be a fail-safe if this root issue happens again. Expect it to be available by EOD, Monday.

Thanks for the update - it is greatly appreciated. I am really looking forward to being able to put this excellent tool to work again, hopefully next week. Link rot is a frustrating problem that degrades the quality of many Wikpedia articles, and this tool has previously provided an easy and highly effective solution. Once it is working normally again, I intend to publicise and promote this tool within my user community - as some editors don't seem to know about it. Bring it on :)

Honestly, I’ll believe it when I see it. The prolonged failure to communicate has been frustrating and aggravating, and only lends me to be skeptical and pessimistic that the bot will ever be fixed.

Being promised that something will happen at X time and failing to deliver on the promise is just as bad as not communicating with anyone in the first place. In all seriousness, is this truly a problem beyond everyone’s control and the bot just cannot be fixed? If I have to literally archive my refs manually going forward then at least just say so.

In T321740#8511412, @Nathan_Obral wrote:

End of day Monday, and it’s still not working. Sadly, I can’t say I’m surprised at this point. If I didn’t know any better, it looks to be broken permanently.

This is actively being worked on. These kinds of comments are not constructive.

:-)

It's still Monday too!

Seems to work as expected

It was working for several hours but it seems to have reverted to prior behavior.

EDIT: Never mind; turns out that a bot run had been done on the pages already. My apologies.

I tried using it just then and it worked fine for me...?

Worked for me too. Cheers.

Thank you to those who helped fixing it - seems to be functioning now! :) Appreciate the work.

In T321740#8511713, @Cyberpower678 wrote:

There we go. It's EOD, Monday. Just as promised. Sorry for the wait. Tool should be working now.

I am sorry; my brain is too wired to think “EOD” as “end of business day”, not the literal end of the day.

Cyberpower, I apologize for being cross and angry the past few weeks. You kept your word and fixed it by EOD Monday. The bot largely works although it does time out on a few pages (but that could be a browser cache issue on my end).

Again, I apologize for the angry tone of my posts in this thread. The issue is fixed and again you kept your promise to fix it. Thank you and cheers.

In T321740#8512577, @Nathan_Obral wrote:

Cyberpower, I apologize for being cross and angry the past few weeks. You kept your word and fixed it by EOD Monday. The bot largely works although it does time out on a few pages (but that could be a browser cache issue on my end).

Again, I apologize for the angry tone of my posts in this thread. The issue is fixed and again you kept your promise to fix it. Thank you and cheers.

It's alright, no worries. The underlying issue that caused the breakage is still there, which is causing the bot to have to work with excessively large amounts of config data, which is proving difficult to isolate and fix. This, coupled with using the tool on large articles, can cause the page to timeout. The fix I introduced, allows the bot to workaround this problem and continue working, but performance may be impacted as a result.

If you want to follow the progress on getting the underlying issue fixed, you can subscribe to T326609

Thanks for the work in getting the IABot working again. Several articles I tried this morning worked fine, but for one article: Tellico Dam, it didn't work. The IABot screen went blank, and when I refreshed there was a red banner error message: "Missing token: The required token was missing for this request. Please try your request again.". I have no idea what this means, or if there is anything I can do. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the work in getting the IABot working again. Several articles I tried this morning worked fine, but for one article: Tellico Dam, it didn't work. The IABot screen went blank, and when I refreshed there was a red banner error message: "Missing token: The required token was missing for this request. Please try your request again.". I have no idea what this means, or if there is anything I can do. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I am also occasionally (but not always) getting this error. I assume it is related to the same underlying issue.

You get that error when you refresh the UI on any action request without resubmitting form data. The tool uses tokens and checksum hashes to ensure requests are not accidentally repeated, and that malicious users can't exploit any CSRF vulnerabilities. In short, they're security features meant to keep you safe. All you need to do is click the submit button again when that happens.

Thank you for your work, but the tool broke again. The browser only displayed an empty page when the "Analyze" button is clicked.

Thanks for the hard work, working now for most articles but some (e.g. "Goo Hara") returns white screen after clicking submit as mentioned above, the white screen doesn't appear immediately but after running for few minutes. Resubmitting doesn't helps as the same white screen will return, retried like 5 times and all same results. Not sure if this is limitations of workaround or not but hopefully could be fixed

In T321740#8515257, @SunDawn wrote:

Thank you for your work, but the tool broke again. The browser only displayed an empty page when the "Analyze" button is clicked.

In T321740#8515258, @Paper9oll wrote:

Thanks for the hard work, working now for most articles but some (e.g. "Goo Hara") returns white screen after clicking submit as mentioned above, the white screen doesn't appear immediately but after running for few minutes. Resubmitting doesn't helps as the same white screen will return, retried like 5 times and all same results. Not sure if this is limitations of workaround or not but hopefully could be fixed

Try it now.

It works for me when I just checked it. I ran it again on a page that earlier today brought me to a blank white page the way SunDawn described but now works: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=1132886366

In T321740#8515322, @Cyberpower678 wrote:

In T321740#8515257, @SunDawn wrote:

Thank you for your work, but the tool broke again. The browser only displayed an empty page when the "Analyze" button is clicked.

In T321740#8515258, @Paper9oll wrote:

Thanks for the hard work, working now for most articles but some (e.g. "Goo Hara") returns white screen after clicking submit as mentioned above, the white screen doesn't appear immediately but after running for few minutes. Resubmitting doesn't helps as the same white screen will return, retried like 5 times and all same results. Not sure if this is limitations of workaround or not but hopefully could be fixed

Try it now.

Works very well! Thank you for your hard work!

In T321740#8515333, @Aoidh wrote:

It works for me when I just checked it. I ran it again on a page that earlier today brought me to a blank white page the way SunDawn described but now works: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=1132886366

In T321740#8515336, @SunDawn wrote:

In T321740#8515322, @Cyberpower678 wrote:

In T321740#8515257, @SunDawn wrote:

Thank you for your work, but the tool broke again. The browser only displayed an empty page when the "Analyze" button is clicked.

In T321740#8515258, @Paper9oll wrote:

Thanks for the hard work, working now for most articles but some (e.g. "Goo Hara") returns white screen after clicking submit as mentioned above, the white screen doesn't appear immediately but after running for few minutes. Resubmitting doesn't helps as the same white screen will return, retried like 5 times and all same results. Not sure if this is limitations of workaround or not but hopefully could be fixed

Try it now.

Works very well! Thank you for your hard work!

Glad to hear. I found/fixed a bug just a moment ago.

In T321740#8515348, @Cyberpower678 wrote:

In T321740#8515333, @Aoidh wrote:

It works for me when I just checked it. I ran it again on a page that earlier today brought me to a blank white page the way SunDawn described but now works: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=1132886366

In T321740#8515336, @SunDawn wrote:

In T321740#8515322, @Cyberpower678 wrote:

In T321740#8515257, @SunDawn wrote:

Thank you for your work, but the tool broke again. The browser only displayed an empty page when the "Analyze" button is clicked.

In T321740#8515258, @Paper9oll wrote:

Thanks for the hard work, working now for most articles but some (e.g. "Goo Hara") returns white screen after clicking submit as mentioned above, the white screen doesn't appear immediately but after running for few minutes. Resubmitting doesn't helps as the same white screen will return, retried like 5 times and all same results. Not sure if this is limitations of workaround or not but hopefully could be fixed

Try it now.

Works very well! Thank you for your hard work!

Glad to hear. I found/fixed a bug just a moment ago.

Thanks you, is working now.