Error in reconciling to Wikidata

Support and Helpdesk
1

Hi there! I've been happily reconciling data on Open Refine to Wikidata all morning.

Since I had lunch, I've been getting the following error:
Guess Types query failed error : java.io.IOException: HTTP error 403 : Forbidden for URL /en/api

I've tried closing and restarting open refine, and disconnecting and reconnecting to my internet (home wifi).

Any suggestions? I use open refine on a Mac, downloaded as an application which I open through Safari.

Thank you!

update - I also just installed the most up to date version of Open Refine to see if that fixed things, and it has not.

update 2 - after a second round of closing down and opening up everything, it seems to be working (including forgetting network and signing back in). If anyone has any ideas on what caused it what of the many steps would have been the fix, so I can try that first next time, I'd be very happy to hear! Thank you.

2

Not sure if it's related (probably tho) but there is a general problem with all wikis right now.
See https://www.wikimediastatus.net/ (page is still being updated while the problem is being found).

3

My colleagues and me are experiencing the same problem in the last few days. Reconciling to Wikimedia Commons works fine, but not to Wikidata. There doesn’t seem to be a general status issue at this moment. Any suggestions?

4

Yes, I encountered the same thing.

When checking https://wikidata.reconci.link/en/api it says: message='Too Many Requests'

I could temporarily trick it by reconciliation with a different lang code, but making now cols. based on reconned values still does not work.

5

Hi @Bart_Magnus and @datasteward8,

The intermittent errors you are seeing are primarily caused by increased rate-limiting from Wikidata. Because the wikidata.reconci.link service is a shared, unauthenticated endpoint, all OpenRefine traffic appears as a single "user" to Wikidata, causing us to frequently hit these limits.

Additionally, there are bugs in how both the reconciliation service and OpenRefine handle these limit-related errors, which often masks the true cause behind a generic "403" or "invalid response" message.

We are looking into several long-term fixes on the OpenRefine side:

  • Better Error Handling: Improving how we report these issues to the user (Issue #7699).
  • Authentication: Exploring changes to how OpenRefine authenticates with the service to allow for higher individual limits (Issue #7731).

There is also an ongoing discussion regarding the official ownership and infrastructure of this reconciliation service, which you can track here: Phabricator T419770.