InternetArchiveBot

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How do we disable the InternetArchiveBot in certain articles?

Swept in from the pub

It's edit warring with me now. The URL it says is dead is not dead! I opened it successfully last night! Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:36, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

By the way, I jumped through a bunch of hoops to try to report a false positive to that bot, and it supposedly sent me a confirmation email that hasn't showed up. And no, it's not in my spam folder either. I'm afraid that bot is fucking up. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:53, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I basically partially blocked InternetArchiveBot from editing the pages it was edit warring for 1 month (which so far has included Boating in Finland, British coast, London/Westminster and Bulgaria). SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 09:12, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

There should be some easy and obvious way to keep the bot away from specific links. In this case there was a superfluous "|" in the URL (perhaps because of the confusing syntax difference between internal and external links). I hope removing it ends the edit war. Some edit warring of the bot can be cured by just removing oddities and errors in the page syntax. –LPfi (talk) 09:35, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678 might be able to fix the bot so that it can handle a superfluous "|". WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:56, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

But that is adding complexity to the bot code. I doubt there are any URLs that include a pipe symbol as last character, and few that would concern us that have it anywhere in the URL. So simply remove them. If some such URLs are needed in Wikipedia, then something might need to be done, but the problem now was that the bot correctly identified the incorrect URL as not found (error 404), or rather, that the URL seemed to work for IK, probably because of some browser magic. –LPfi (talk) 16:45, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for dealing with the immediate problem, guys! SHB2000, how did you partially block the bot? Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:26, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I think one solution would be to alter Template:Dead link so that there was an optional paramter which "hid" the dead link. I suggest something like "slow=2023-03-16", which would record when the link was manually confirmed to be ok. It would then be possible to monitor how long it has been since the link was checked - like we do with Template:Warningbox and Category:Has warning box with out of date warning, or get a bot to remove slow parameters that were over 2 years old. AlasdairW (talk) 20:53, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Hiding live links the bot flags as dead would compound the problem, wouldn't it? Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:25, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I think it would make the dead link have no effect if it also removed them from Category:Articles with dead external links, or are there other implications? It would also make it visible to editors that the bot is no longer checking this link, so they might manually check the link when editing the same section. AlasdairW (talk) 21:44, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

@Ikan Kekek: when you click on Special:Block/InternetArchiveBot (or whatever link that leads to Special:Block). Under "Block type" (the second section, right underneath "Username, IP address, or IP range", change the block type frok Sitewide to Partial. You then list all the pages you want the bot from editing, and then set a time. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 05:21, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

I see. Thanks! Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:22, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Also, if you want to test this feature out, I'm more than happy for you to test it on SHB2000 (test 2) (talk · contribs) need it be. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 06:39, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

It's OK; it seems simple enough. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:43, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Not a problem. I'm glad this feature exists, though, and I thank whoever came up with the idea. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 07:53, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I like partial blocks and they seem like a good way to prevent this bot from edit warring. --Comment by Selfie City (talk) (contributions) 14:56, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Cyberpower's comment above suggests creating a template with a specific name, which will cause the bot to skip the marked link. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:41, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

I created the template {{cbignore}}, to have its documentation available (the template code is empty). Using it is easier than having to administrate partial blocks. I marked it experimental for the time being. What is the whitelisting Cyberpower678 mentioned? –LPfi (talk) 08:38, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I think the process for whitelisting is "ask Cyberpower to do it for you", but it's possible that there is a self-service system for it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:04, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Whitelisting domains would require a tool root such as myself or Harej (talk · contribs) to do it for you. Single individual URLs can be whitelisted by any administrator. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 03:11, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

So, is {{cbignore}} the accepted way of dealing with this now? I keep reverting the bot on e.g. Bayreuth because it thinks there's something wrong with https://www.vgn.de/ El Grafo (talk) 14:11, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678, Harej, could one of you please whitelist https://www.vgn.de ? It's the website of a large German public transport network that works just fine and I'm getting tired of revering the bot all the time. Thanks, El Grafo (talk) 07:37, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Sure. It appears to be georestricted, which is why the bot can't load it.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 20:27, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! El Grafo (talk) 07:24, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

InternetArchiveBot

Swept in from the pub

Any idea why it's adding 11k bytes of text on Rail travel in Great Britain? I blocked the bot from editing that page. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 21:32, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

It was wigging out because of a malformed hack that I removed. I have no clue why that was the "solution" it was programmed to do, but it should be safe now. Let me know if it's not. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:45, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. After reverting InternetArchiveBot for the third time, I raised this on the bot's talk page on metawiki:User talk:InternetArchiveBot. As Rail travel in Great Britain has a lot of links, I suggest putting a time limit (6 months?) on how long the bot is blocked from that page. AlasdairW (talk) 11:19, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

I only blocked it for 1 month, which is more than enough time to resolve the issue. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 11:25, 29 October 2023 (UTC)