I found in the /data/project/syslog/syslog file that the citoid service kept being respawned.
On deployment-sca01.eqiad.wmflabs in /var/log/upstart/citoid.log there is a bunch of:
etc/citoid/config.yaml:1 (function (exports, require, module, __filename, __dirname) { # Number of work ^ SyntaxError: Unexpected token ILLEGAL at Module._compile (module.js:439:25) at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:474:10) at Module.load (module.js:356:32) at Function.Module._load (module.js:312:12) at Module.require (module.js:364:17) at require (module.js:380:17) at Object.<anonymous> (/srv/deployment/citoid/deploy/src/server.js:27:20) at Module._compile (module.js:456:26) at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:474:10) at Module.load (module.js:356:32)