User:Mikeblas/Robots Behaving Badly
This log documents problems I observe in robot behaviour.
Marked viable link as dead in California State University, San Bernardino
[edit]The California State University, San Bernardino article had this text used as a reference: <ref name="calstate.edu">http://www.calstate.edu/impact/campus/bernardino.html| CSUSB economic impact report</ref>
The problem here is that a user got confused about how to write a reference -- understandable, since there are so many similar but different ways to do it; and because the syntax is so obscure. The problem here is that there's a pipe character after the URL which shouldn't be there.
At 2018-08-02T08:55:54, InternetArchiveBot came along and edited the article to mark the link as dead. It coded this: <ref name="calstate.edu">http://www.calstate.edu/impact/campus/bernardino.html|{{Dead link|date=August 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} CSUSB economic impact report</ref>
The bot didn't consider that the pipe character didn't belong, even though pipe characters are never part of a URL. (See RFC-3986.) When it marked the URL as "fix-attmpted=yes" and "dead", human editors weren't particualrly interested in trying to fix it. After more than 2.5 years, the issue was discovered and manually repaired. -- Mikeblas (talk) 15:32, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
Hiding Vandalism in Emmanuel Constant
[edit]In the Emmanuel Constant article, an anonymous user changed a reference from <ref name="weiner"/> to <ref name="Big wenier boi"/>. Note that the change included a newline between "boi" and the trailing quote.
About 2.5 hours later, at 2020-10-07T10:17:18, AnomieBOT discovered this. Instead of reverting the vandal's edit, it simply removed the trailing newline with the comment "Fixing reference errors". The vandalism remained until I fixed it today. Note that User:BattyBot and User:Monkbot both edited the article in the interim. The broken reference was visible for about 85 days.-- Mikeblas (talk) 18:31, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
- @Mikeblas: Did you report the issue to AnomieBOT's owner? GoingBatty (talk) 18:44, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
Duplicate references in Agios Polykarpos, Aetolia-Acarnania
[edit]At 2020-10-24T15:46:48, AnomieBOT edited Agios Polykarpos, Aetolia-Acarnania. The commant left said the bot was "Rescuing orphaned refs ("census11" from rev 846750467)".
I can't figure this claim as the previous version had no problems. After the change, the "references" section of the article was marked with Cite error: The named reference "census11" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page). The bot added a new definition for <ref name=census11/>, but that definition is redundant to the definition produced by {{Infobox Greek Dimos}}.
The error was manually repaired more than two months later. Does this robot not preview its changes (or check the article after savings changes) to see if errors are being introduced? -- Mikeblas (talk) 20:57, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
Masking a botched edit in Double majors in the United States
[edit]At 2020-10-31T07:27:11, an anonymous user [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=&diff=prev&oldid=
- prev 986383536] added a space to a reference anchor name in the Double majors in the United States article. This caused the article to render with an inline red message saying that Cite error: The
<ref>tag has too many names (see the help page).
About 7 hours later, AnomieBOT noticed this and made a fix to add quotation marks around the modified reference. This edit changed the wiki code from <ref name=delrossi 2008> to <ref name="delrossi 2008">. Because there was no definition for "delrossi 2008" in the article, the effect of the robot's edit was to change the "too many names" error into an error that said "The named reference delrossi 2008 was invoked but never defined".
The problem was manually fixed two months later by reverting the anonymous user's bogus edit. -- Mikeblas (talk) 15:25, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
As of 2019-11-22, the BookLikes page rendered without error. At 2020-12-28T10:27:05 PrimeBOT decided to edit the article to remove the "alexa" parameter from the article's infobox. The bot also adjusted whitespace in the infobox invocation and re-ordered its parameters.
When it did so, it also removed the <ref name="BookLikes Alexa Ranking"> reference definition. The removal left the article with a brand-new error in the "references" section reading Cite error: The named reference BookLikes Alexa Ranking was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
This problem was fixed manually about 75 minutes later. A note was left on the robot's talk page about the erroneous edit. -- Mikeblas (talk) 16:16, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
Duplicated references in Basketball Wives LA
[edit]At 2020-10-26T10:48:01, GreenC bot decided it would "rescue" some references in Basketball Wives LA (season 3). It modified the <ref name="Bibel"> reference definition in this article to have archive-url and related parameters. Note that the named reference "Bibel" is not used elswhere within this article.
The article has a section marked with <onlyinclude tags, and the reference is defined within that section. The Basketball Wives LA has its own definition of the <ref name="Bibel"> reference. Before GreenC Bot's changes, those two definitions matched and the article rendered without error. After the change, the reference definitions no longer match and the article contains an error about the duplicate reference definition.
I fixed the problem by removing the unused anchor name from the Basketball Wives LA (season 3) article. Since the robot edited a section explicitly marked with inclusion tags, it should have figured out which articles were referencing that and examined those articles for new errors after it made its change. -- Mikeblas (talk) 18:23, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
Creating duplicate references in 2020 United States census
[edit]AnomieBOT edited 2020 United States census on 2020-12-13T18:12:46. The change added quotes around the name parameter in the reference definition <ref name=Census Bureau timeline>...</ref>. It also added the quotes to invocations of that reference definition. Finally, it added some date parameters to other templates. It's important to note that there were two invocations of a reference by this name, and two very different definitions of a reference by that name.
I'm not sure of the mechanic here, but after the edit, the "References" section of the article grew a new Cite error: The named reference "Census Bureau timeline" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page) error message. Before the edit, the page rendered with four different messages that read Cite error: The <ref> tag has too many names (see the help page).
I attempted a manual fix, which left behind a "too many names" error. About three hours later, the bot the quotes again . Tired of battling the bot, I made another manual fix and excluded the bot from the page using {{bots}}. While the bot was trying to make fixese, it wasn't ever completely successful--and was disruptive to human editing of the article during those attempts. -- Mikeblas (talk) 19:33, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
Creating duplicate references at List of Bleach volumes
[edit]At 2020-12-24T12:04:29 Monkbot edited List of Bleach volumes. The intent of this edit is to change {{cite web}} parameters so they consistently contain hyphens; change "accessdate" to "access-date", for example. I can't understand why this is important or desirable. More objectively, I can't figure out why it's worth the risk of damaging the articles ... particularly when the bot doesn't check to see if any damage has occurred as a result of the edits it makes.
The edit changed about 40 reference definitions did cause damage, however. The definition for <ref name="JP74">...</ref> is unused by name within the article. That is, there's no invocation of <ref name="JP74" /> to re-use that reference. However, the article transcludes text from List of Bleach chapters (424–686), which also defines a reference named <ref name="JP74">...</ref>. That definition wasn't hyphenated, and so the newly changed definition collided with the transcluded definition and produced an error message about duplicate reference definitions in the article. That error didn't exist before Monkbot's change.
This issue was manually fixed about eight days later by removing the name of the reference. Since the reference wasn't reused, the name wasn't useful. -- Mikeblas (talk) 19:10, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
Mangling infobox in I.O.U. (Freeez song)
[edit]Until 2020-12-29T12:01:40, the I.O.U. (Freeez song) rendered without error. At that time, PrimeBOT made an edit to the article to remove the "format" parameter from the {{infobox song}}. The bot also adjusted spacing in the infobox parameters and re-ordered some of the parameters, though these actions aren't identified in the edit summary it left. Its edit was clumsily performed, leaving the article failing to render the infobox it edited correctly.
The bad edit was discovered manually about an hour later and manually reverted. The author was notified and excused the bot because the article was "GIGO". This implies that the bot doesn't check for errors before editing articles, ignores fatal parsing errors while doing its work and proceeds, leaving additional damage behind without warning or logging. -- Mikeblas (talk) 16:05, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
Duplicate reference definitions in International rugby league in 2019
[edit]Until 2020-12-29T22:00:26, the International rugby league in 2019 article rendered without error. It was at this time that Monkbot decided to edit the article to hyphenate select template parameters. In particular, it changed the definition of <ref name=JuneRef>.
However, the robot was apparently ignorant of (or careless of) the inclusion of identical definitions of the same reference name from other articles. In particular, 2021 Rugby League World Cup qualification – Repechage and 2019 Oceania Cup (rugby league) are transcluded to this article, and carry definitions of the same reference. Since the robot's change made those definitions diverge, errors were introduced into the rendered article.
The robot was also negligent in checking the results of its edit. Had it simply viewed t he article after its edits, or checked a preview before saving its changes, it would have seen that it was creating new visible error messages in the article and known not to save the change without doing further work. Instead, it proceeded to save its changes and damaged the corpus.
This issue was repaired manually discovered and repaired about 45 days later. -- Mikeblas (talk) 15:26, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
Creating new referencing error in Four Seasons Hotel & Private Residences, One Dalton Street
[edit]At 2020-12-29T22:15:31, BattyBot discovered this text in <ref name="Architect" yvguhboimp,[tcokml,/> the Four Seasons Hotel & Private Residences, One Dalton Street article. While this reference definition seems bogus, it works just fine and the article was rendered without error.
The bot decided to change the reference, anyway. It moved the quotation marks creating a new error in the rendering of the article. The resulting code: <ref name="Architect yvguhboimp,[tcokml,"/> tried to invoke a reference that wasn't defined.
Had the bot checked its own work, it would have immediately seen that it had caused a new error in the article. It didn't, and the problem wasn't discovered for 13 more days. It was fixed manually. -- Mikeblas (talk) 20:08, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
- @Mikeblas: Thanks for the report - I've opened a bug with the AWB developers. I hope you'll also express your concern to the vandal who added the bogus text and the editor who added the
|last=Staff|first=Writerincorrectly (if you haven't done so already). Happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 03:21, 13 January 2021 (UTC)- @GoingBatty: I'm not on WP:RCP; you might ask them about tracking down the vandal. Do they use any bots? The user who added the text was an anonymous editor; anyone can edit Wikipedia. On this page, I call out the bad behaviour of bots because they've been vetted, approved, tested, and trusted to autonomously edit the wikipedia corpus. And therefore should answer to a much higher standard.
- Do you have a link for the issue you've opened? -- Mikeblas (talk) 05:38, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
Duplicate references in Body of Proof
[edit]Monkbot edited Body of Proof at 2020-12-30T06:38:01 with changes to add hyphens to {{cite web}} parameters. In doing so, it edited the definition <ref name="season2">.
Before the edit, the article rendered without error. After the edit, the changed "season2" reference no longer matched a reference of the same name transcluded from List of Body of Proof episodes. Thus, the bot exchanged inconsequential changes for spelling of system template parameters for a visible error in rendering the article.
The issue was manually discovered and repaired by renaming the references in the article, and removing the names from the single-use reference definitions in the List of Body of Proof episodes article. -- Mikeblas (talk) 19:34, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
Duplicate reference definitions in 2019 AFC Asian Cup qualification
[edit]In 2019 AFC Asian Cup qualification, there is a definition for the reference <ref name="2023_expelled">. It also includes text from the 2019 AFC Asian Cup qualification – Play-off Round article, which has a character-for-character duplication of this reference definition. The article renders without error.
Around 2021-01-11T07:43:00, Monkbot made edits to the article that introduced a duplicate reference definition errors. The problem is that this robot makes nearly inconsequential changes without checking to see if those changes caus any errors in rendering the article.
The issue was manually fixed on 2021-01-16, around five days later. -- Mikeblas (talk) 19:25, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
Duplicate reference definitions in 2012 in Norwegian football
[edit]The 2012 in Norwegian football article transcludes content from several sources, including 2012 Tippeligaen and 2012 Norwegian First Division. Both of those transcluded articles include definitions for this reference: <ref name="poengtrekk">.
Until 2021-01-12T17:25:25, those definitions were precisely the same. When included into the parent article, the references were combined and the article rendered correctly. monkbot decided to edit the 2012 Tippeligaen article, however, changing language=Norwegian to language=no, and accessdate= to access-date=.
In doing so, the definitions of the references included in the parent article became different even though they had the same name, resulting in an error in the "References" section that looked like this: Cite error: The named reference "poengtrekk" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
The issue was manually discovered and fixed about four days later. -- Mikeblas (talk) 17:37, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
Duplicate references added to Church of San Francisco (León); grammar issue created
[edit]Until 2021-01-14T03:22:36, the Church of San Francisco (León) rendered correctly. The article had two instances of this reference definition in it: <ref name"History">. These are syntactically incorrect, but the article renders fine because the spurious text inside the tag is apparently ignored -- at the very least, it results in an un-named reference anchor and the reference is correctly rendered.
Yobot made edits to the article that it described as "minor fixes". It modified the <ref name"History"> declaration to include an equals sign: <ref name="History">, but this broke the article by causing a duplicate reference definition with another, correctly-defined reference of the same name.
After this edit, the article rendered with the Cite error: The named reference "History" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page). repeated twice in the "references" section of the article.
In the same edit, the bot changed this rendered text:
- Built outside the walled city, in its southern part, the first church of San Francisco was built in the 13th century."<super>[ref]</super>.
into this text:
- Built outside the walled city, in its southern part, the first church of San Francisco was built in the 13th century.".<super>[ref]</super>
That is, it relocated the period before the reference, doubling it with the existing period. While the grammar error might not be so easy to detect, the robot should correct references more carefully -- or at least preview its changes to see if it is adding new, visible error messages to articles it edits.
These problems were manually discovered [1] about six days later. -- Mikeblas (talk) 15:35, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
Disruptive edit at A Stranger In My Own Back Yard
[edit]The article A Stranger In My Own Back Yard had incorrectly coded reference usage which looked like this: <ref name="Official Charts - Gilbert O'Sullivan"</> (Note the opening angle bracket before the closing token in the reference tag.) While incorrect in syntax, this construct rendered correctly and yielded the intended results without error.
At 2021-01-15T11:55:33, AnomieBOT made some changes to the article. Without mentioning it in its edit summary, it rewrote these references as<ref name="Official Charts Gilbert - O'Sullivan"/>. While the trailing bracket was removed, the name of the reference was unexpectedly changed. Two different usages of this pattern were edited in the same way.
A reference of that name is undefined anywhere in the article's text, so the edit caused the article with a new error message in the "reference" section that looked like this: Cite error: The named reference Official Charts Gilbert - O'Sullivan was invoked but never defined (see the help page). AnomieBOT doesn't check its own work to see if it introduces new rendering errors, so it saved the change and abandoned the newly-damaged article.
The issue was manually discovered and fixed about two days later. -- Mikeblas (talk) 14:43, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
Creating duplicate reference definitions in COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan
[edit]Before 2021-01-17T17:39:41, the COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan rendered just fine. But BattyBot decided to edit it. I can't guess what it's goal was; it provides this terse edit summary: "Fixed CS1 errors: dates and general fixes".
It might have been trying to combine some repeated references, as two references had the same definition but weren't using naming--and it edited one of those. Somehow, it chose "Taiwan Centers for Disease Control" as the reference name: <ref name="Taiwan Centers for Disease Control">
However, it didn't check the templates used by this article. {{COVID-19 pandemic data/Taiwan medical cases chart}} defines a reference with this same name, but different content. The bot saved its change and left the article with an error in the "References" section reading Cite error: The named reference "Taiwan Centers for Disease Control" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).. Because this bot doesn't check its own work for errors, it left the article in a worse state than before it made changes.
The problem was manually discovered and fixed about 36 hours later. -- Mikeblas (talk) 16:07, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
- Hi again! If you look at the version before BattyBot edited it, you'll see an error in reference #25 stating Check date values in: |access-date= because the access-date contained "Januaru" instead of "January", which puts the article in the maintenance category Category:CS1 errors: dates. BattyBot fixed this error, which was the goal of the edit.
- I hope you noticed that there were two links in the edit summary "Fixed CS1 errors: dates and general fixes", which provide much more information than I could possibly fit in the edit summary. I also have documented my bot tasks at User:BattyBot. I am now using the more verbose edit summary "Fixed reference date error(s) (see CS1 errors: dates for details) and AWB general fixes" for this bot task.
- When BattyBot (and some other bots that use AutoWikiBrowser) runs, it runs AWB's general fixes to make other minor updates at the same time. If you click on the second link in my edit summary, you'll see the logic for combining repeated references is detailed in the "Duplicate Unnamed References" section. I'm sorry that AWB caused an issue with this article, and I have reported this bug as well.
- I see there were a few more reference and date issues in COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan, which I have now updated. Thanks for the report! GoingBatty (talk) 23:19, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks for the explanation, but also thanks for opening the issue towards getting a generalized fix.
- Indeed, I saw the links. The edit summary doesn't tell me (or anyone else) what the bot might have changed. The "general fixes" link goes to a page that lists more than 40 categories of fixes, many with several different sub-types. Indeed, this huge list wouldn't fit in an edit summary. It would seem useful to indicate which of the specific items in that list were attempted. -- Mikeblas (talk) 15:45, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
- I hope the more verbose edit summary now tells you (and everyone else) what the bot might have changed. When general fixes are enabled, all of the general fixes are attempted. GoingBatty (talk) 16:16, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
Duplicate reference definitions in International rugby league in 2018
[edit]The International rugby league in 2018 article was in good shape until 2021-01-18T01:03:18. The article, like many other aggregate summary articles, transcludes sections and content from many other articles. This one takes content from about two dozen other articles.
At that time, Monkbot decided to edit one of the transcluded articles -- 2018–19 Rugby League European Championship C. It made edits to arbitrary template parameters in that article. Specifically, it changed some parameters in the definition
of the reference <ref name="french ref">.
Thing is, International rugby league in 2018 transcludes that definition along with another definition of the a reference with the same name (and precisely the same content) from 2018 Rugby League European Championship B. For whatever reason, Monkbot did not make the same template parameter changes to this article, causing teh definitions to differ, and therefore causing the International rugby league in 2018 article to begin rendering with visible error messages.
This issue was discovered and remedied about 25 days later. -- Mikeblas (talk) 16:18, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
Duplicate reference in Big 12 Men's Basketball Tournament articles
[edit]Up until 2021-01-25T19:19:18, the 2015 Big 12 Men's Basketball Tournament rendered without error. At this time, BattyBot edited the article to change minus characters into en-dash characters ("-" into "–").
The article includes two precisely identical reference definitions named <ref name= "Standings"> which were both equally affected by the change. However, the article also includes text from Template:2014–15 Big 12 men's basketball standings. This template provides another definition of the <ref name= "Standings"> reference, which, after the bot's edits, no longer matches and causes a rendering error.
After BattyBot's edit, the article displays Cite error: The named reference "Standings" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page). multiple times in the "References" section.
Because the bot doesn't check its own work for errors, this issue had to be manually discovered. It was manually repaired about 11 hours later. -- Mikeblas (talk) 15:16, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
- BattyBot repeated this pattern in the 1999 Big 12 Men's Basketball Tournament against Template:1998–99 Big 12 men's basketball standings with this edit, which was repaired in this edit.
- And again in the 1998 Big 12 Men's Basketball Tournament article against Template:1997–98 Big 12 men's basketball standings with this change. It was fixed with this update. -- Mikeblas (talk) 15:25, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
Duplicate reference in 1911 New Zealand census
[edit]At 2021-01-26T21:00:28 InternetArchiveBot edited 1911 New Zealand census, apparently to provide an Webarchive link for a particualr reference. The rbot described this as "rescuing 2 sources", but only one reference definition was changed.
Problem is, the <ref name="m.stats.govt.nz"> reference definition that was changed had two edits. Before the robot's arrival, the two definitions were precisely the same, character-for-character, and rendered just fine. After the change, they differed, and the article started rendering with an error message in the "References" section reading Cite error: The named reference "m.stats.govt.nz" was defined multiple times with different content".
The robot ignored the effect of its change.
The issue was manually discovered about 36 hours later, and manually repaired at that time. -- Mikeblas (talk) 16:26, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
Duplicate references in BIA (TV series)
[edit]At 2021-01-28T09:21:09, Monkbot edited the BIA (TV series) article for "cosmetic" changes. The changes had no visible effect on the rendered article aside from adding errors for multiple definitions of two references.
About two hours later, the changes were discovered and reverted. The errors were caused by Monkbot's failure to check for new errors after making edits. They bot didn't notice that text from a transcluded article also included definitions for the same references.
To prevent further damage to the article by this errant bot, changes were made to the transcluded article to remove the unused reference anchor names. -- Mikeblas (talk) 19:56, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
The Eve Best article was edited by AnomieBOT at 2021-01-30T00:49:07 with this change.
The article had an incorrectly formatted reference tag that looked like this: <ref name=AAT . She played Miss Faragonda in the winx club saga: enemies with the god atlas. />. The article rendered correctly, but didn't include the "She played..." sentence since it was consumed by the tag.
The bot's edit didn't improve matters. The bot claimed to be "fixing reference errors", but in fact it created a new error message by wrapping the text after the "name=" field in quotes. The obviously mis-named reference was now a visible error, and the useful reference was removed from the text.
The issue was manually noticed and fixed about 30 hours later with this edit. -- Mikeblas (talk) 15:29, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
Duplicate ref definitions in Currie Cup articles
[edit]At 2021-02-13T17:50:26, InternetArchiveBot edited 1971 Currie Cup to "rescue" a reference. It modified one reference definition named "Currie Cup Finals History".
This robot doesn't check its work when it is done, and isn't careful when evaluating the article before making changes. As such, it didn't notice that the article had a second definition of this same reference. It saved its change, causing the message Cite error: The named reference "Currie Cup semifinals: Stats and facts" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page). to appear in the "References" section of the article.
This issue was manually discovered and repaired about a day later. The same robot did damage to the 1980 Currie Cup article in the same pattern at 2021-02-14T07:17:14. -- Mikeblas (talk) 22:14, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
Duplicate reference in 2000 Big 12 Men's Basketball Tournament
[edit]Up until 2021-02-22T08:51:21, the 2000 Big 12 Men's Basketball Tournament rendered just fine. At this time, unfortunately, Citation bot decided to damage the article with this change.
The article had two definitions for <ref name="Standings">. The bot decided to change them by converting a minus into an en-dash (I think -- I don't have the visual acuity to tell the difference between those two characters), and by removing the format=PDF parameter. I don't know why these changes were necessary.
The robot didn't consider any of the reference definitions provided by transclusion in the article, and didn't check its work to look for new errors before saving its changes. In particular, {{1999–2000 Big 12 men's basketball standings}} defines its own version of the "Standings" reference, which previously exactly matched the reference used in the article itself.
After the bot's changes, the article began rendering with a visible error.
This issue was manually discovered and fixed about an hour after the bot's edits. -- Mikeblas (talk) 18:02, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
Duplicate references in 2017 Big 12 Men's Basketball Tournament
[edit]Up until 2021-03-07T09:08:26, the 2017 Big 12 Men's Basketball Tournament rendered correctly. It was at that point that Citation bot came along and switched minus signs for some un-typable typographical dash symbol.
The bot is too buggy to check for problems it creates or pre-emptively look for possible conflicts in its changes. It can be no surprise, then, that the bot caused new referencing errors and saved them to the article, resulting in this visible error message: Cite error: The named reference "Standings" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page). Cite error: The named reference "Standings" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
One of the reference definitions the bot changed was "Standings". This definition appears twice in the article. For no apparent reason, the bot delibertly changed only one instance of the reference, creating the error message. Jeeputer manually noticed the problem and made a fix about 36 hours later.
The fix was incomplete, however, as another definitoin of the reference came from the {{2016–17 Big 12 men's basketball standings}} template. Since the three definitions visible to the renderer were all identical until the bot came along, the article rendered just fine.
The final issue was fixed manually more than three days after the bot did its damage. -- Mikeblas (talk) 19:32, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
Irrelevant fixes in GNN (news channel)
[edit]The GNN (news channel) was vandalized at 2020-12-23T19:50:46. Rather than do anything about the vandalism, AnomieBOT edited the article to replace a missing reference definition.
An anonymous user tried to repair the vandalism, but ended up instead dupliating the articles content. More specifically, they pasted a good copy of the article into the article, keeping the bad copy as well.
With no concern for correctness, Yobot came along and edited the article to combine a repeated reference definition and delete repeated category declarations. This was done at 2021-01-14T23:50:31.
These problems were manually discovered about 16 weeks later and manually repaired. -- Mikeblas (talk) 00:29, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
False claim of victory in Dinosaur size
[edit]AnomieBOT made an edit to the Dinosaur size article at 2021-03-29T12:43:58. In that edit, it claimed to be "Fixing reference errors", but the inexplicable change it made didn't make any differrence to the problems in the article at all. -- Mikeblas (talk) 18:55, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
Two reference errors added to A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die (film)
[edit]PrimeBOT made some edits to A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die (film) at 2021-07-26T17:13:06. The change was apparently to make cosmetic fixes to the ordering of roles in the movie infobox, per a recent RFC. The changes left the article with two new error messages. The edits were discovered two days later and manually reverted. -- Mikeblas (talk) 14:26, 28 July 2021 (UTC)
Misguided fix to referencing errors in Hamburg, New York
[edit]AnomieBOT claimed to "rescue" a reference by combining one undefined reference with another in this change. The provenance of the census references in this article are already pretty wobbly, and the change made those matters worse because the bot doesn't do any verification of the references it adopts; it just drops them in. Here, it didn't fix anything and just piled on to an existing problem.
The problem was discovered manually three days later, since the both owner apparently doesn't monitor the bot's work. After reverting the change, the problematic edits were reverted manually. Note that the same edits were manually reverted on the same day the bot decided to step in. -- Mikeblas (talk) 18:25, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
Inappropriate title used in newly added reference in Vanessa Villela
[edit]At 2021-07-30T09:20:39, CiteBot claimed to "add a title" to a reference "change a bare reference to CS1/2" in the Vanessa Villela article when it performed this edit. Problem is, it didn't actually retrieve the article and ended up adding the title from Instagram's login page: "Login • Instagram". That left the article with an error about {{cite web}} using a generic title.
The error wasn't noticed until about 11 months later, since the robot's work isn't monitored. At that time, it was manually fixed. -- Mikeblas (talk) 09:00, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
Doubling references at Keyshia Cole
[edit]At 2022-10-30T09:06:30, User:Fullmoon211 made this change to the Keyshia Cole article, seemingly moving some references and text around, which removed a name from a reference definition but kept the same referencing.
AnomieBOT came along about 45 minutes later and "rescued" the missing reference. Instead of making a correct fix, it duplicated the existing reference including the name= parameter, putting the same reference in the article twice in a row.
Duplicating references is something that we don't want human users to do, and we shouldn't allow automation to do it, either. -- Mikeblas (talk) 22:24, 30 October 2022 (UTC)
Irrelevant reference used to "rescue" masks problem
[edit]Around 2022-07-19T17:51:32 an anonymous user edited the Dioko Kaluyituka page to include new stats. Unfortunately, they used reference tags that weren't elsewhere defined in the article, leaving referencing errors behind.
Fragrant Peony tried to set things right about six weeks later, around 2022-09-04T18:16:42. Somehow, this triggeed AnomieBOT which "rescued" the missing footnote with this text: <ref name="sw">{{Soccerway|175962|accessdate=4 April 2018}}</ref> from an entirely different player's article. Of course, that Soccerway reference described that other player completely.
Since the bot doesn't consider any context when "rescuing" references, and its owner doesn't check its work, the article was left with a completely irrelevant reference. That issue went undetected for almost two months before it was manually discovered and fixed. -- Mikeblas (talk) 22:24, 30 October 2022 (UTC)