User talk:InternetArchiveBot

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Operation status

For the most up to date information see the run pages or Wiki Operations Summary on Airtable

• 🟢 InternetArchiveBot is currently running on 300+ Wikimedia wikis.
• 🟢 InternetArchiveBot is being tested on Japanese Wikipedia (ja).
• 🟡 Testing is stalled on Alemannisch Wikipedia (als) and Asturian Wikipedia (ast).
• 🔴 Bot is approved but disabled on Hungarian Wikipedia (hu).
• 🔴 Bot is approved but disabled indefinitely pending software improvements on French Wikipedia (fr), MediaWiki.org, Norwegian Nynorsk Wikipedia (nn), Polish Wikipedia (pl), and Portuguese Wikipedia (pt).

Last updated: 21:36, 14 March 2026 (UTC)

How this page works

1. Ask your question in any language. Questions in English or German will receive the fastest responses.
2. Our team will try to respond within seven days.
3. Seven days after our response we will mark the thread as resolved. This queues the thread for archiving.

   If our response does not answer your question, you are welcome to remove the "section resolved" tag and write an additional comment.

4. Seven days after the thread is marked as resolved, it will be archived. Once a thread is archived, it should not be un-archived. Instead, create a new thread and link to the old one.

SpBot archives all sections tagged with {{Section resolved|1=~~~~}} after 7 days.

URLs have changed at a couple of wikis

It looks like the bot no longer runs at two wikis where the URL has changed:

• Scruffy Wiki (now Scruff Wiki) - URL has moved to https://scruff.miraheze.org
• Simple Electronics Wiki - URL has moved to https://amps.wiki.gd (or https://simpleelectronicswiki.miraheze.org)

Rob Kam (talk) 10:23, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

So it seems I'm unable to do anything due to my travels. I keep hitting IP blocks on Miraheze globally which is impacting SUL account creation too.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 09:16, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

The bot is still inactive on Scruff Wiki and Simple Electronics Wiki --Rob Kam (talk) 20:10, 24 July 2025 (UTC)

functioning of the bot on it.wiki

Hi, sorry for the inconvenience. I'm writing because I've noticed this kind of edits made by the bot on it.wiki. The italian it:Template:cita web allows to automatically show the links to both the original and the archived version if the link to the archived version on internet archive is present in the |url= parameter. Therefore, edits like the one that i linked are completely useless, since what the reader sees is exactly the same as before. With the big disadvantage though that the article "weighs" 2 275 bytes more than before. Would it be possible to teach to the bot not to intervene if it finds a link to an archived page of the wayback machine in the |url= parameter? I hope that I could explain myself, if you have questions pleas ask. Thank you. Friniate (talk) 20:38, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

This is unfortunately a limitation of the current version of IABot since it's code is shared on all wikis.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 16:43, 24 July 2025 (UTC)

• This section is being kept open to aid in testing the new release of IABot coming up.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 16:43, 24 July 2025 (UTC)

Returning archival functions into pt.wiki

Hi! I'm a sysop on the Portuguese Wikipedia. According to the Airtable tracker, the pending issue for ptwiki is Support for ptwiki-specific citation parameter. Are there any specifications available for what's needed, or any way I could help move this forward? Cheers, BraunOBruno (talk) 19:09, 2 July 2025 (UTC)

@BraunOBruno: it's just waiting on the next major release of IABot. I have not forgotten ptwiki.  :-)—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 12:12, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

Weird editing by bot on enwiki

This bot done an edit to en:Institute of Chartered Accountants of the Eastern Caribbean, which made that article part of a cs1 error category. bot added |archive-url= but also added {{webarchive}} to same field.––KEmel49 (talk) 17:52, 8 July 2025 (UTC)

@KEmel49: That's a new one. In any event, you should be able to safely delete the Webarchive template without the bot fighting you on that. I'll keep this section open so I have additional test cases for the new IABot release.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 12:20, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

Request to improve error message

Hello.

This is very useful thanks but I use it so rarely that I always forget to set the correct wiki on the top right of the single page request.

1) Please could you change the “bad page” error message to say that the page is not found on (name of wiki)

2) Could the default wiki please be the most common one - presumably enwiki?

Chidgk1 (talk)

@Chidgk1: IABot is undergoing a rewrite. I will keep this thread open to remember your suggestion. Thank you.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 19:42, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

Sub-referencing

Tracked in Phabricator:
Task T426063

Hi @Cyberpower678, WMDE Technical Wishes is working on sub-referencing, a new feature to re-use references with different details. While the main use case is book pages, we are also seeing use cases with external links in sub-references (example). Sub-referencing is currently deployed to German Wikipedia as our first pilot wiki (and to test.wikipedia.org). We're hoping to deploy the feature to other Wikipedia language versions in a few months. Based on your documentation it seems the bot needs to be updated in order to deal with links within <ref details="...". My test [1] confirms this, the bot ignored the first plain link within the sub-reference and only changed the identical link in the regular reference. We would be thankful if the bot could support sub-references! Let me know if there are any questions or anything we can help with. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 15:19, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

url link detection on es.wiktionary

Hi, in es.wiktionary we generally don't add external links directly, but as a template parameter (see wikt:es:Template:referencia). Can someone do the favor of modifying the bot in order to detect links inside templates? The two templates that have to be searched into are wikt:es:Template:referencia and wikt:es:Template:ejemplo and the parameters are named |u and |url. Tmagc (talk) 15:48, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

What is needed to add fr.wikiquote?

Hello! We at the french wikiquote are discussing about broken links and we agreed that we will test different solutions / bots. I would like to try the InternetArchiveBot, but I can't find documentation about adding a whole wiki. If the bot needs a archiveurl parameter in our templates with url parameters, I can add those to our templates (see the test). I already checked out the management console and I am happy to collaborate with the operators of this bot in order to test this bot among other solutions for the broken links problem in the french wikiquote wiki. --TLD35 (talk) 20:13, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

Teach IABot how to save these URLs

on sv:Haiku, the URL declared dead 2025-04 contained (I fixed it) the part svar=45569.

This can be used to fix it, with the only required parameter. (It will result in a redirect, but to an URL with another number, and I don't know how to translate.)

• https://www4.isof.se/cgi-bin/srfl/visasvar.py?sok=%25%25%25%25&svar=45569&log_id=729393
  • to: https://frageladan.isof.se/visasvar.py?svar=45569

On the two older domains formats are:

• http://www.sprakochfolkminnen.se/sprak/sprakradgivning/frageladan.html?url=-27634753/cgi-bin/srfl/visasvar.py/sok=filosofie+doktor&svar=45302&sv.url=12.c17e514db30bb2a810ea -- again the svar= parameter
  • to: https://frageladan.isof.se/visasvar.py?svar=45302
• http://www.spraknamnden.se/sprakladan/ShowSearch.aspx?id=id=26101;objekttyp=lan -- here the id= parameter
  • to: https://frageladan.isof.se/visasvar.py?svar=26101

Bot on cat.wiki

Bot doesn't work on cat.wiki. I don't know if you need to activate them or configure it. Probably never used Pallares (talk) 07:46, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Dead links in dewiki

Hello, under the Kategorie:Badminton, some dead links have crept in (contracts with federations not renewed, new websites, site restructuring, etc.). Can you help with this? If possible, please fix them permanently, without an interim maintenance check (I'll do that anyway; with thousands of links, I'd be busy for months).

1. tournamentsoftware.com: No longer has a contract with the World and European Federations. This means: All international links need an archive, national championships do not. Broken pages link to https://bwf.tournamentsoftware.com/user/login. Wikidata partially solves this: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P2729

I've extracted the web links and sources and compiled all the links to be archived for bwf.tournamentsoftware.com: de:Portal:Badminton/Links. Since some pages appeared in multiple search results, unfortunately, there are some duplicates.

At the end, the bwf.tournamentsoftware.com links must be replaced in all wikis. -- Florentyna (talk) 06:10, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

Calling live-page ones "rescues"

Recently I ran "Analyze a page" on en:Latino_sine_flexione with the "Add archives to all non-dead references (Optional)" enabled. It seems to have worked great; thanks for this tool! However, I note the edit message says "Rescuing 13 sources and tagging 0 as dead." This is a little misleading for the ones where a live source was archived. Perhaps it could say "Rescuing X sources, supplementing Y, and tagging Z as dead." or something like that? Dingolover6969 (talk) 20:37, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Surrounding loose archive listings in parens

I notice that if the link wasn't in a cite template, the rescued version can end up looking a bit like this:

Peano, Giuseppe (1903). De Latino Sine Flexione. Lingua Auxiliare Internationale Archived 2021-05-04 at the Wayback Machine, Revista de Mathematica (Revue de Mathématiques), Tomo VIII, pp. 74-83. Fratres Bocca Editores: Torino.

Firstly, I notice that the archive should be outside of the italics.

Secondly, perhaps it would be better to put it in parens or something?

Peano, Giuseppe (1903). De Latino Sine Flexione. Lingua Auxiliare Internationale (Archived 2021-05-04 at the Wayback Machine), Revista de Mathematica (Revue de Mathématiques), Tomo VIII, pp. 74-83. Fratres Bocca Editores: Torino. Dingolover6969 (talk) 20:51, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

InternetArchiveBot removes references from the Reflist section

On the Hungarian Wikipedia, on July 3, 2026, the InternetArchiveBot completely removed the content of several valid ‘ref+cite web’ combinations placed in the ‘Reflist’ section and replaced them with a single closed ‘ref’ tag, which caused an error because these were defined with content only in the ‘Reflist’ section, not in the main text. The edit can be viewed here: diff We didn’t even notice it for a long time, and we had to fix it manually afterward. If I notice something like this again, I’ll stop the bot. Please, I ask the developer to fix this error. --Pkunk (talk) 19:20, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

@[[User:InternetArchiveBot|InternetAr@ ~2026-47112-40 (talk) 02:21, 30 August 2026 (UTC)

A magyar wikipédián az InternetArchiveBot 2026. július 3-án a Reflist szekcióban elhelyezett több szabályos ref+cite web kombináció tartalmát teljesen eltüntette és egyetlen lezárt ref taggal helyettesítette, ami hibát okozott, mert ezek tartalommal csak a Reflist szekcióban voltak definiálva, a fő szövegben nem. A szerkesztés itt látható: diff Nem is vettük észre sokáig, és Kézzel kellett javítani utána. Ha megint észreveszek ilyet, akkor le fogom állítani a botot. Kérem, a fejlesztő javítsa ki ezt a hibát. --Pkunk (talk) 19:20, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

English Wiktionary: adding extra info

First of all, this bot is absolutely fantastic and I very much appreciate all of those who maintain it. Our wikiproject now supports extracting the archive date from the IA link and therefore, no longer need |archivedate= specified. See: this diff and note how the archive date is still displayed in the quotation (the last quotation of the last sense). I request to update the bot to only provide the archive link. TranqyPoo (talk) 18:11, 21 August 2026 (UTC)

Request for Wikimuseum

Hello, I hope you are doing well.

I am writing to request that, once the test wiki opens, InternetArchiveBot be active on Wikimuseum.

Using Google Translate

Regards, Jackie SMG (talk) 20:18, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

False positives

Lots of false positives on W:2026 United States Senate elections and the 50 subpages, as well as W:2026 United States gubernatorial elections etc. Aesurias (talk) 04:54, 8 October 2026 (UTC)

 This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 14:41, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

Two pending bug reports on Phabricator

I'd hate to block IAB because of some bugs that seem trivial to fix, but it's been inserting its template inside of external links, and replacing the whole content of external links with another template, resulting in lint errors and loss of information:

• https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T433800
• https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T422735

What's the maintenance status of the bot? It's been doing this for way too long. pon_or (talk) 14:33, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

This should have already been patched, but I'm taking a look again. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 14:41, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

I should point out that the reason that incident happen is because the URL is malformed, and the underlying cause triggering the issue was actually fixed. Nevertheless I added a bit of a patch to make it still handle the bracket bounds correctly, but GIGO still applies here. The replacing content issue should be fixed now. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 15:30, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

 This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 15:31, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

False positives associated with Racer.com website

Good evening - the IABot appears to have flagged several references as dead links, where the pages linked are still live. I've just restored one here on 2027 IndyCar Series (en.wiki), with the given URL here. A similar scenario was also identified by another user on the 2026 FIA World Endurance Championship (en.wiki) article, which were also identified with Racer.com URLs. I tried to raise through "Report a problem" at the top, but was prompting a permissions error following OAuth. Hope this suffices. With kind regards, Craig(talk) 18:25, 9 October 2026 (UTC)

False positives on www.dof.gob.mx

Here -- and similar diffs in the article series as the bot works its way through it -- what I see as live URLs are being marked as dead. Moscow Mule (talk) 16:01, 12 October 2026 (UTC)

Аксёнова Клавдия Ивановна

Большое спасибо, что Вы заархивировали Указ о награждении орденом Ленина. Но к сожалению Аксёнова вылетела из списка награжденных. Страничка не опускается. Исправьте пожалуйста. Мор1949 (talk) 10:21, 13 October 2026 (UTC)

Я не знаком с исходным материалом, но полагаю: если на момент формирования архива г-жа Ивановна уже была удостоена ордена Ленина, то не было веских причин что-либо менять. Нынешнему администратору соответствующей веб-страницы следует просто удалить её имя из списка, если решение о награждении орденом Ленина было отменено.

(I am unfamiliar with the source topic, but my guess is that if Ms. Ivanovna had been awarded the Order of Lenin at the time the archive was made, then there would not be a good reason to alter anything. The current maintainer of the webpage in question should simply remove her name from the list if the Order of Lenin has been rescinded.) Gommeh (talk) 14:44, 14 October 2026 (UTC)

User scripts

Is there a user script I can install that puts a link in the Tools section that allows me to easily run the bot on a page with one click? Gommeh (talk) 14:45, 14 October 2026 (UTC)