User talk:Citation bot/Archive 36
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Archive 30 | ← | Archive 34 | Archive 35 | Archive 36 | Archive 37 | Archive 38 | → | Archive 40 |
Edit to Pokémon
Dear Smith609,
Your Citation bot recently edited Pokémon (on the suggestion of User:Abductive). Many of the changes it made were good, but I had to revert four things. The bot changed these two sources to "Cite news" and "Cite magazine", respectively:
- Meet the man who made Pokémon an international phenomenon, Washington Post – Blogs
- The Ultimate Game Freak, Time
If you open the first link, you'll see that it's from a weblog. ProQuest doesn't state that the article ever appeared in print. If you open the second link, and search for "online exclusive", you'll see that the article didn't appear in the physical Time magazine. Thus, the right template for both sources would be Cite web, not Cite news or Cite magazine.
There is also this source:
The bot changed it from Cite web to Cite magazine. However, I don't have that issue. I can't tell if the web article I cited is also verbatim in the magazine.
Furthermore, the bot changed this:
to this:
The old link works with me, the new one doesn't. Don't ask me why. 😏
All these issues are understandable, but I still thought it was worth bringing them to your attention.
Cheers, Manifestation (talk) 10:53, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
- Why is Citation bot reinstating the changes I reverted? I hope I don't get into a revert fight with a bot! 😩 - Manifestation (talk) 10:51, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- The Google Books clean-up trims them to the shortest URL that gives the same result for everyone. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:42, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- Hmm... this is really strange. I just opened the new Google Books url on my Android Chrome, and the browser showed a blank page. But then I opened the link again, and it worked fine! 🤔 This must be a bug in Google Books, which means it has nothing to do with Citation bot. However, the rest of my comment still stands. - Manifestation (talk) 13:23, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- The Google Books clean-up trims them to the shortest URL that gives the same result for everyone. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:42, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- @AManWithNoPlan: I just specifically excluded the Time and Washington Post sources. Did I do good?
Also, this may be an unreasonable thing to ask, but could the Citation bot interface with ProQuest? For example, here is the metadata of the Washington Post article I mentioned. The "Source type" parameter reads "Blog, Podcast, or Website" and the "Document type" parameter reads "Blogs", i.e. it's a Cite web source. Cheers, Manifestation (talk) 18:23, 18 July 2023 (UTC)- ProQuest has proven to be impossible to access at this. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:16, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- {{cite news}} is not just for papers, but also for online news sources. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:26, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- What proquest thinks it is, it not relevant. The article was sent out as news to a large variety of newpapers similar to the AP Wire. As the docs say "Cite news is used to create citations for news articles in print, video, audio or web." and "cite web is used to create citations for web sources that are not characterized by another CS1 template." AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:11, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
- {{cite news}} is not just for papers, but also for online news sources. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:26, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
- ProQuest has proven to be impossible to access at this. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:16, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
PLoS → PLOS for publications prior to 2012
- Status
- Not a bug
- Reported by
- Leyo 12:25, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
PloS One
was replaced byPLOS ONE
in a citation of a 2009 publication, even though the publisher PLOS and the associated journals were only renamed in 2012- What should happen
PloS
should be kept for publications prior to 2012- Relevant diffs/links
- Special:Diff/1167057982
PloS was never used, only PLoS and PLOS, and the difference in capitalization isn't worth preserving. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:30, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
- Okay, I see that the "L" was not capitalized in this example, either. However, "PLoS ..." should undoubtedly be preserved in publications prior to 2012 as this was the name of the journal at that time. --Leyo 09:03, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
- The name didn't change, they changed how they styled it. We are not obligated to follow style. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:12, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
- It's not just style. See e.g. in this 2009 paper:
Citation: vanEngelsdorp D, Evans JD, Saegerman C, Mullin C, Haubruge E, et al. (2009) Colony Collapse Disorder: A Descriptive Study. PLoS ONE 4(8): e6481. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006481
--Leyo 09:20, 28 July 2023 (UTC)- That's exactly what style is. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:28, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
- No, style would be e.g. "PLOS" or "PLOS". We wouldn't consider this in WP article citations.
- In any way, as stated, "PLoS …" should undoubtedly be preserved for publications prior to 2012. --Leyo 11:24, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
- The journal says to cite using PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/citation?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0000001 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:20, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
- No idea why their script output is like that. Lazy coding?
- In the PDF version of this paper, it says
Citation: Almeida MC, Steiner AA, Branco LGS, Romanovsky AA (2006) Neural Substrate of Cold-Seeking Behavior in Endotoxin Shock. PLoS ONE 1(1): e1. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000001
--Leyo 14:33, 28 July 2023 (UTC)- Not lazy encoding but a deliberate choice on their part. They want everyone to embrace their new identity. Similar to you reference a person with their new identity ("Oh, I knew Jane Smith back in high school", even though she was "Jane Brown", since she was not married yet). Similar to how one uses "she" for Jenner even for back when Jenner was on the men's olympics team. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:28, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
- The journal says to cite using PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/citation?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0000001 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:20, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
- That's exactly what style is. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:28, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
- It's not just style. See e.g. in this 2009 paper:
- The name didn't change, they changed how they styled it. We are not obligated to follow style. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:12, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
Repair GoogleBook links
- What happens
- If you have a link like
https://books.google.ca/books?id=W6l4jhzIg7oC&pg=pa10
the page needs to be specified as PA10 to work, not pa10, e.g.
Very likely likewise for pp=PR/PT/RA/etc... from above. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:22, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
Bot making cosmetic-only edits
- Status
- Reported by
- Nikkimaria (talk) 01:53, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
- @AManWithNoPlan: bot needs stopping please. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:01, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
- New clean-up added, but did not get non-consmetic done right. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 02:03, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
- Still happening. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:00, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- this took a lot of puzzeling, but it is now fixed. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:24, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
Bad title
Can you please add |title=How to access research remotely
as a bad title. Caused by https://www.cabdirect.org/ (see example https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hydrocarbonoclastic_bacteria&diff=prev&oldid=1168379608 where the bot suggested that title for https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/abstract/19921376862 before I did lot of manual edits). Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 12:32, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
Bad meta-data
In this edit the bot wrongly changed 2018 to 2021, thereby breaking the sfn refs which call the source. DuncanHill (talk) 16:55, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- That's just dandy. That journal has the year as 2021 for everything published on or before 2021. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:10, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
Adding false titles when script-title used instead of title
- Status
- Fixed
- Reported by
- UndercoverClassicist (talk) 16:45, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- Where script-title and trans-title have been used (but therefore not title), the bot added a false title based on, presumably, the metadata of the linked file.
- What should happen
- if script-title is used but title is not, the bot shouldn't attempt to fill title.
- Relevant diffs/links
- here
- Replication instructions
- Not sure if this is a universal thing or a peculiarity of this citation/file.
caps
- Status
- Fixed
- Reported by
- Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 19:07, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
|title=Reviewed work: A Short History of the Middle East, George e. Kirk
- What should happen
|title=Reviewed work: A Short History of the Middle East, George E. Kirk
- Relevant diffs/links
- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AJosve05a%2Fsandbox&diff=prev&oldid=1168438036
Thanks for the bolds. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:01, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- But why did it add it in lower caps in the first place? Both JSTOR and crossref both state it with a capital E? Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 20:05, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- "e" is lowercase word, and it confused it with a word. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:28, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
IEEE follow up
For scale, the IEEE book thing cleaned up about ~3000 citations, across ~1300 articles. There's still a few remaining (WP:JCW/DOI/10.1100#10.1109), but I'm doing a second run on them to catch stragglers.
Hopefully we can do something similar for ACM (WP:JCW/DOI/10.1125#10.1145), and SPIE (WP:JCW/DOI/10.1100#10.1117)!
Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:50, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- There still are issues with handling things though...
- After tnt'ing title/chapter/journal, i get
- The bot should be able to figure out to remove the spurious journal here Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:57, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
More things to TNT
- What should happen
- BioOne, IEEE Xplore, PubMed, PubMed Central, ScienceDirect, Science Direct>
Both linked and unlinked versions. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:33, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- That also goes for the publisher parameter if it is a journal. [9] Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 00:45, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- And title of course [10] Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 00:49, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
Caps: RAND Journal
- What should happen
- [11]
Caps: Annalen der Physik
- What should happen
- [12]
Caps; La Rioja
- What should happen
- [13]
Caps: SoftwareX, HardwareX
- What should happen
- [14]
HardwareX is a different journal, but same thing. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:43, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
Caps: JOM
- What should happen
- [15]
Untitled_new_bug
- Status
- {{not a bug}}
- Reported by
- 2600:1700:5AF0:BD10:E5F5:F3EB:23ED:C951 (talk) 03:29, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Bot is citing a podcast as factual information and inserting a lot of someone's biased personal opinions. Thus information is also inaccurate.
- The bot is doing no such thing. You're confusing things in the edit summary. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:42, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
Citation bot deleted the author of a conference paper
- Status
- {{not a bug}}
- Reported by
- Taylor Riastradh Campbell (talk) 17:40, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- Citation bot deleted the author of a conference paper while spuriously converting it from {{cite conference}} to {{cite book}}.
- What should happen
- A correct {{cite conference}} should not be converted to {{cite book}} and the author of a paper should not be deleted.
- Relevant diffs/links
- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sterbenz_lemma&diff=prev&oldid=1167799463
- Replication instructions
- No idea how this happened.
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Citation bot didn't do that, I did. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:25, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
Caps: IUCrJ
- What should happen
- [16]
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Caps: IOP Conference Series
- What should happen
- [17]
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Adds redundant date to citation that already has same metadata in year
- Status
- Fixed
- Reported by
- —David Eppstein (talk) 05:27, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- While converting an incorrect journal cite to a correct conference cite, it added date=1984 to a citation that already had year=1984. This is minor because the citation templates do not actually complain about the redundancy, but maybe they should.
- Relevant diffs/links
- Special:Diff/1169260044
Caps: La Rioja, linked
- What should happen
- [18]
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
The bot has special code for links with redirects. I will need to add code that detects if both redirect to same thing. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:08, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
Adds dates when year is already there
- What should happen
- It shouldn't
- Relevant diffs/links
- [19]
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Fixed i think. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:53, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
More open access DOIs
- AME Publishing Company
- ANU Press
- Athabasca University Press
- BioMed Central
- Baishideng Publishing Group
doi=10.11569
doi=10.12998
doi=10.13105
doi=10.35711
doi=10.35712
doi=10.35713
doi=10.37126
doi=10.3748
doi=10.4239
doi=10.4240
doi=10.4251
doi=10.4252
doi=10.4253
doi=10.4254
doi=10.4291
doi=10.4292
doi=10.4329
doi=10.4330
doi=10.4331
doi=10.5306
doi=10.5312
doi=10.5313
doi=10.5314
doi=10.5315
doi=10.5316
doi=10.5317
doi=10.5318
doi=10.5319
doi=10.5320
doi=10.5321
doi=10.5409
doi=10.5410
doi=10.5411
doi=10.5412
doi=10.5492
doi=10.5493
doi=10.5494
doi=10.5495
doi=10.5496
doi=10.5497
doi=10.5498
doi=10.5499
doi=10.5500
doi=10.5501
doi=10.5527
doi=10.5528
doi=10.5662
- Center for Promoting Ideas
- Cogitatio Press
- Copernicus Publications
- Dove Medical Press
- eLife
- F1000 (publisher)
- Frontiers Media
- Herald Scholarly Open Access
- Hindawi (publisher)
- JMIR Publications
- Juniper Publishers
- MDPI
- Medknow Publications
- OMICS Publishing Group
- Open Book Publishers
- Open Humanities Press
- Open Library of Humanities
- OpenPsych
- PeerJ
- Pensoft Publishers
- PLOS
- Punctum Books
- Science Publishing Group
- ScienceOpen
- Scientific Research Publishing
- SciPost
- SciRes Literature
- Ubiquity Press
- Veruscript
- World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology
All of the above can be marked with |doi-access=free
when encountered. A few of those may already be covered. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:47, 9 August 2023 (UTC)
- I.e. if you find
10\.(1100|1155|1186|1371|1629|1989|1999|2147|2196|3285|3389|3390|3410|3748|3814|3897|4061|4089|4103|4172|4175|4236|4239|4240|4251|4252|4253|4254|4291|4292|4329|4330|4331|5194|5306|5312|5313|5314|5315|5316|5317|5318|5319|5320|5321|5334|5402|5409|5410|5411|5412|5492|5493|5494|5495|5496|5497|5498|5499|5500|5501|5527|5528|5662|6064|6219|7167|7217|7287|7482|7490|7554|7717|7766|11131|11569|11647|11648|12688|12703|12715|12998|13105|14293|14303|15215|15412|15560|16995|17645|19080|19173|20944|21037|21468|21767|22261|22459|24105|24196|24966|26775|30845|32545|35711|35712|35713|35995|36648|37126|37532|37871|47128|47622|47959|52437|52975|53288|54081|54947|55667|55914|57009|58647|59081)
- in
|doi=
add|doi-access=free
. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:55, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
CAPS: gen. nov.
- Status
- Fixed
- Reported by
- Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 15:19, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- gen. Nov.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cyberlindnera&diff=prev&oldid=1169349544 - What should happen
- gen. nov.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cyberlindnera&diff=next&oldid=1169349544
The URL is this. But the link when added by default renders www.dtnext.in
in the website field instead of "DT Next". I'd appreciate this not be the case. Kailash29792 (talk) 06:39, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
Fixed AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:56, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
More Conferences
To do: ACM (WP:JCW/DOI/10.1125#10.1145), and SPIE (WP:JCW/DOI/10.1100#10.1117)! What with these? AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:12, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- Something similar to IEEE. I'll file a more detailed report on them after I inspect a few.. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:36, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- Okay. I have pushed out some code for those. Let me know what is missed. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:37, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- Here's a few [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:57, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- Those all now should work. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:51, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- Can confirm most if not all seem to work, thanks. Next, SPIE! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:09, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- I see my /2204 run is still going... it's redundant with the /1809 run going on. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:08, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- SPIE [26], [27], [28], [29] Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:01, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
- Killing specific runs is not doable at this time. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:44, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
- SPIE [26], [27], [28], [29] Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:01, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
- I see my /2204 run is still going... it's redundant with the /1809 run going on. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:08, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- Can confirm most if not all seem to work, thanks. Next, SPIE! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:09, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- Those all now should work. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:51, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- Here's a few [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:57, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
- Okay. I have pushed out some code for those. Let me know what is missed. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:37, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
More improvements AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:15, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
- More ACM [30], [31], [32], [33]. More SPIE [34], [35], [36], [37], [38], . Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:17, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
- A few more IEEE [39], [40], [41], [42]. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:08, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
- When survival training is complete, I will look at. At least one you have sent me is not bot fixable because of bad meta-data. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:16, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
- GIGO is GIGO. Can't do miracles when that happens.
- Not sure what survival training is, but hopefully it doesn't take too long! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:40, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
- Some more from Atlantis Press [43], [44], see also WP:JCW/DOI/10.2000#10.2991. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:48, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
- When survival training is complete, I will look at. At least one you have sent me is not bot fixable because of bad meta-data. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:16, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
- A few more IEEE [39], [40], [41], [42]. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:08, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
Fixed AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:56, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
More open access
If the DOI starts with 10.5210/fm
, it's open access. [45] Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:54, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
Conference papers are getting systematically mislabelled as book chapters with incorrect author information
- Status
- {{not a bug}}
- Reported by
- Taylor Riastradh Campbell (talk) 12:45, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- Citation bot has been changing citations to conference papers that are mislabelled as 'journal' into conference papers that are mislabelled as 'book'. Sometimes this deletes the actual paper authors, sometimes it leaves them incorrectly as authors of the whole 'book' of proceedings (which almost always has editors, not authors), and it always de-emphasizes the relevant paper title in favour of the usually irrelevant title of the book of proceedings that just names a conference.
- What should happen
- Citation bot should either leave the citation alone ('journal paper' is a less bad approximation to 'conference paper' in many disciplines than 'book') or use a conference-type citation.
- Relevant diffs/links
- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hertzbleed&diff=prev&oldid=1169159636 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Herbert_Gelernter&diff=prev&oldid=1169159498 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Haskell&diff=prev&oldid=1169158911 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Floating-point_arithmetic&diff=prev&oldid=1169126388 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sterbenz_lemma&diff=prev&oldid=1167799463
- Replication instructions
- I don't know how Citation bot has been invoked to make these changes, but there's been a spate of these recently that caught my attention, so it must be reproducible.
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Conference proceedings are published in books, nor journals, so cite book is appropriate. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:11, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
- Well, technically {{cite conference}} would be more correct than {{cite book}} which in turn, as you say, is more correct than {{cite journal}}. However, as previously discussed, that template is missing some parameters or something in it's current state - and that is why the bot is defaulting to use cite books (is that "permanent", or is that only for now until that conference template has been "optimized? Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 13:57, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
- I don't know what parameters are missing, but in every case I've found, {{cite conference}} is the best of the three options and {{cite book}} is the worst of the three.
- It is technically correct that conference proceedings are often gathered into 'books' and published, sometimes even with a physical codex (just like journals). But it is wrong to treat authors as if they wrote the book of conference proceedings, worse to remove the authors altogether, and confusing to relegate the title of the conference paper—which is usually the main point of the citation—to some chapter reference at the end of the citation as if the 'book' were a cohesive whole and not just a collection of unrelated publications in the field.
- In fields such as computer science, journal and conference papers serve a similar function (authors submit papers to venues for peer review, editors review and make publish/reject decisions, papers are gathered together into a periodic volume)—more similar to one another than arbitrary book chapters are to either one. So even though {{cite journal}} may be technically incorrect for publication venues that don't have an associated in-person conference presentation, it is still better than {{cite book}} for all of the cases I linked. If any automated change is to be made, it should be to {{cite conference}}; changing {{cite journal}} to {{cite book}} is strictly worse in all these cases. Taylor Riastradh Campbell (talk) 15:31, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
- There's no way for the bot to know a book is a book of conference proceedings, and cite conference is too weird of a template to support. And cite book is perfectly adequate to cite conference proceedings to begin with, e.g.
- Liu, Chen; Chakraborty, Abhishek; Chawla, Nikhil; Roggel, Neer (2022-11-07). "Frequency Throttling Side-Channel Attack". Proceedings of the 2022 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 1977–1991. doi:10.1145/3548606.3560682. ISBN 978-1-4503-9450-5.
- is a perfectly fine citation. If the bot could figure out the editors, that would be even better (like here) e.g.
- Liu, Chen; Chakraborty, Abhishek; Chawla, Nikhil; Roggel, Neer (2022-11-07). "Frequency Throttling Side-Channel Attack". In Yin, Heng; Stavrou, Angelos; Cremers, Cas; Shi, Elaine (eds.). Proceedings of the 2022 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 1977–1991. doi:10.1145/3548606.3560682. ISBN 978-1-4503-9450-5.
- but nothing in either of the above citations is wrong, unlike a cite journal which has the completely wrong metadata. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:29, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
- There's no way for the bot to know a book is a book of conference proceedings, and cite conference is too weird of a template to support. And cite book is perfectly adequate to cite conference proceedings to begin with, e.g.
Date problem
- Status
- Not a bug - Edit was not done by bot
- Reported by
- Keith D (talk) 10:14, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- Added a
|date=
in the middle of a|chapter=
parameter - What should happen
- keep parameters intact
- Relevant diffs/links
- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caofeidian_District&diff=prev&oldid=1170230207
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
More conferences
Failure to notice conference/journal confusion causes real title to become lost
- Status
- Won't fix DOI was wrong.
- Reported by
- —David Eppstein (talk) 06:58, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- Special:Diff/1169110415
- What should happen
- Not that. The reference was mildly bad before (it had a conference listed as a journal, a very common but very minor mistake that does not cause errors visible to readers) but the bot caused it to become much worse (copying the conference title into the article title and losing the real article title). GIGO, I know, but the bot should not escalate minor invisible errors into major visible errors.
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
That reference had the wrong DOI to start with, that is not good. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:52, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
Journal-to-conference conversion loses subtitle of paper
- Status
- Fixed - for "conference" dois, the sub-title will be added now. I also localized the conference doi detection code to a single subroutine
- Reported by
- —David Eppstein (talk) 05:30, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- While converting an incorrect journal citation to a correct conference citation, the bot changed the title of the paper from "Google news personalization: scalable online collaborative filtering" to the shorter but incorrect "Google news personalization". The landing page for the doi shows the full title so the shortening is incorrect.
- Relevant diffs/links
- Special:Diff/1169261516
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
- Also Special:Diff/1169261883 and Special:Diff/1169263279. The majority of these conversions that I have checked (four out of the last five) appear to be faulty. This cleanup effort is creating more problems than it is solving. And making more work for human editors rather than saving work. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:34, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
- Going forward, even new references will get the better titles. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:02, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
Misc
- Status
- {{fixed}} - now adds date instead of year, and a few other tweaks
- Reported by
- — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 13:07, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- This (despite some good changes in it) was doubly unhelpful. In the The Workshop citation, it replaced a citation to a specific page with just the page-range of the entire article. In the ResearchGate cite, it replaced a link to an exact page in the actual PDF document with a near-useless link to the abstract of the entire paper. Not the first questionable thing the bot's done at this article.E.g. here, it again replaced an intentionally specific
|page=16
with a whole-article span of|pages=16–20
. In the same pass, it replaced this link with this one, which was silly because the latter just redirects to the former; same story with replacing this with this, other than the&gbpv=0
in the former was not necessary. And again with changing this to this, other than the former's trailing&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
was unnecessary. Two other similar pointless changes of this sort in the same edit (though it also made some more sensible GBooks-related tweaks in other places).This edit was also weird, since|year=
is deprecated in favor of|date=
except for a specific use case. (But it was an older edit, and maybe the bot doesn't do that any more.)Finally, there does not appear to be any utility whatsoever in changing|work=
to|journal=
or|magazine=
(or|newspaper=
, or ...), since they're all aliases for the same parameter, and all this change does is make the code longer for no practical purpose (for either readers or editors). Plus it impedes easily changing the citation template when the wrong one has been used for the source type in question.Feel free to refactor this as needed for your work flow, e.g. into separate trouble tickets or whatever.Lest this sound like nothing but spleen-venting, I do appreciate the legit cleanup and citation-completion work this bot does. - What should happen
- Implicit in the above material.
- Relevant diffs/links
- Diffs are included above.
- Replication instructions
- Unknown; just reporting what I'm seeing.
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
When did |year=
get discouraged. That is a new one. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:27, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
Regarding |page=16
, you should use |at=p. 16
. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 13:30, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
- No. From the documentation: "at: For sources where a page number is inappropriate or insufficient."
- When a cs1|2 template specifies a specific page in
|page=
, the bot should not replace that with the article page range; don't make readers search through an entire article looking for the single sentence that supports the wikitext in our article. |date=
recommended over|year=
since this documentation template edit 19 April 2015.|year=
discouraged since this documentation template edit 18 November 2020.- —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:53, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
- The doc is wrong. If all you use is a year, put it in a
|year=
. As for journals, the page range is the standard way to cite them, rather than the first page only. This here is a bit special in that the first page of a journal article was meant, but you can easily change|pages=33–36
to|pages=33–36 [33]
in that case. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:16, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
- The doc is wrong. If all you use is a year, put it in a
- See Template:Cite journal#Date: "year: Year of source being referenced. The usage of this parameter is discouraged; use the more flexible
|date=
parameter instead unless both of the following conditions are met: 1. The|date=
format is YYYY-MM-DD. 2. The citation requires aCITEREF
disambiguator." The doc is not wrong, and these changes were made years ago and have largely propagated site-wide. I have made literally thousands and thousands of changes of deprecated|year=
to|date=
and not one single time has anyone raised an objection, because they follow the documentation and (if they have questions) investigate the discussions that led to the documentation. It is not a legitimate job of any bot to defy consensus-built template operation and robotically abuse the template parameters; the tail does not wag the dog, and a bot's approval to operate is conditional on it doing things that are supported by consensus. If you want to change the CS1/CS2 documentation, you can make a proposal at WT:CS1. That also applies to the next bit.Page numbers: See the detailed documentation under Template:Cite journal#Description: "page: The number of a single page in the source that supports the content. ... OR: pages: a range of pages inthe source that supports the content". The parameter can also be used to indicate the full-page range of the source, for short sources like journal citations, but there are specific instructions for including this information if for some reason it is desired: "using the following notation: article-page-range [content-supporting-pages], for example: pp. 4–10 [5, 7]". The primary reader- and editor-facing purpose of citing pages at all is to cite the content-supporting material, and the vast majority of our citations are written this way. It's "reader-hateful" to change these into ranges that cover the entire cited work, unless you use the prescribed "pp. 4–10 [5, 7]" format, but there are so vanishingly few citations actually written this way (because they are not actually useful to either the reader or to editors doing verification) that people are apt to revert this anyay. Citing only the full page range, rather than specific content-supporting pages, of journal articles is absolutely not "the standard way to cite them" on Wikipedia, however commonly the practice can be found in the academic world (and even there, it's only a peculiarity of certain citation styles; I read a lot of journal material, and plenty of it cites specific pages in other articles).More: Wikipedia:Citing sources#Short and full citations: "A full citation fully identifies a reliable source and, where applicable, the place in that source (such as a page number) where the information in question can be found. .... A short citation is an inline citation that identifies the place in a source where specific information can be found ... giving summary information about the source together with a page number." This applies to all publication types; there is no magical exception for journals. WP:Citing sources#Identifying parts of a source: "When citing lengthy sources, you should identify which part of a source is being cited." That applies to all journal articles that are not trivially short. Next, Help:References and page numbers: "give a page number or page range—or a section, chapter, or other division of the source—because then the reader does not have to carefully review the whole cited source to find the relevant supporting evidence". Next, Wikipedia:References dos and don'ts: "DO: ... Say where in the source the information came from."On mis-using|at=
to provide page numbers, Trappist above is correct that this is not what that parameter is for. See also Help:References and page numbers#Other in-source locations: "Often, a page number is not appropriate such as when citing an audio or video source or a book that has no page numbers. The Citation Style 1 [and CS2 for that matter] templates have an |at= parameter that can be used to include non-page locators."
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:18, 25 July 2023 (UTC)- I think Headbomb is saying, if the page # is the first page, it's probable the editor didn't want to look up the last page # (or didn't have full access to find it) so they simply cite the first page number only. There is a chance the citation is actually for the first page, but statistically speaking it probably does less damage to cite the full range then first page only. Anyway, if the citation is for the first page and it has the full range, presumably the reader will start with the first page anyway. -- GreenC 04:31, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
- Generally, the bot only changing pages, when the the page number is the first and only first page. Otherwise it will assume there is a reason for the single page number. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:59, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
- You could try putting the whole page range in the citation and then using Template:Rp after to specify a specific page. BhamBoi (talk) 17:32, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
- I think Headbomb is saying, if the page # is the first page, it's probable the editor didn't want to look up the last page # (or didn't have full access to find it) so they simply cite the first page number only. There is a chance the citation is actually for the first page, but statistically speaking it probably does less damage to cite the full range then first page only. Anyway, if the citation is for the first page and it has the full range, presumably the reader will start with the first page anyway. -- GreenC 04:31, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
- See Template:Cite journal#Date: "year: Year of source being referenced. The usage of this parameter is discouraged; use the more flexible
Generally speaking, one should avoid directly linking to RG PDF files, since RG limits the number of downloads of PDFs, these links add to that count. Secondly, the PDFs are much less accessible than the abstract pages. Lastly, one can always just click on the PDF link. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:56, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
- I can buy that. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:18, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
The GB normalizations greatly stabilize URLs and make what different people see more consistent and removes javascript dependencies. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:58, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
- I'll also take your word for it. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:18, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
Bot is mistaking a press agency for a work
- Status
- {{fixed}}
- Reported by
- ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:27, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- Bot considers the Associated Press a "work"
- What should happen
- Bot should consider the Associated Press an agency
- Relevant diffs/links
- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Grand_Salami_Time%21&diff=1168275649&oldid=1167012064
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
- It is on the agency's own website/publication. So, here the bot is correct, same as BBC News or The Guardian is considered both a work and a publisher, the AP is considered both a work (on their own website) and an agency. We could add it to both parameters, but that would be overkill. See User_talk:Citation_bot/Archive_33#Mislabeling_Associated_Press_and_Reuters_as_a_"work"_rather_than_an_"agency" and User_talk:Citation_bot/Archive_23#Unhelpful_changes, as well as User_talk:Citation_bot/Archive_23#Agency. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 21:32, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- The Associated Press is not a work, it is an entity. It should not be marked up with italics or semantically identified as a "work". ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:37, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- Also The Guardian isn't a publisher. It's publisher is the Guardian Media Group. Likewise for BBC News, published by the BBC. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:40, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
blished by the BB
Where's the evidence that there is a work/publisher relationship between BBC (Sport|News) and BBC? There isn't any. There is evidence that the relationship is that of a division. In other words, BBC News is the news division of BBC. In my opinion, italicizing it is erroneous and misleading. See the initial sentence in our own article for BBC News. Dawnseeker2000 23:09, 1 August 2023 (UTC)- BBC News is a division of BBC whose one of responsibilities is to manage the "BBC News" section of the bbc.com website (other responsibilities include managing an identically-named TV channel and a radio station). "BBC News" can thus be used in several meanings, including both a media publisher and an information product (TV channel, radio programme, website section, etc.). — kashmīrī TALK 19:40, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
- "Associated Press" is not a work. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:07, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
- BBC News is a division of BBC whose one of responsibilities is to manage the "BBC News" section of the bbc.com website (other responsibilities include managing an identically-named TV channel and a radio station). "BBC News" can thus be used in several meanings, including both a media publisher and an information product (TV channel, radio programme, website section, etc.). — kashmīrī TALK 19:40, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
- Also The Guardian isn't a publisher. It's publisher is the Guardian Media Group. Likewise for BBC News, published by the BBC. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:40, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- The Associated Press is not a work, it is an entity. It should not be marked up with italics or semantically identified as a "work". ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:37, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- Sigh... This topic yet again. AP News is the work of Associated Press, a corporate entity. An
|agency=
provides news copy to other entities, commonly newspaper publishers for publication in those newspapers. When this happens,|agency=AP News
or|agency=Associated Press
is correct. - There are editors who believe that 'Associated Press' must not be used in
|work=
when citing news copy hosted at apnews.com. To me, AP News and Associated Press are sufficiently synonymous that it is a distinction without a different. So, to me:|url=https//apnews.com...
with either of|work=AP News
or|work=Associated Press
are both correct; with|agency=AP News
or|agency=Associated Press
is not correct. - The bot's edit is correct.
- —Trappist the monk (talk) 22:26, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- Then have
work=AP News
andpublisher=Associated Press
. Have you ever wondered why this keeps on coming up? It's because it's wrong and needs to be fixed. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:31, 1 August 2023 (UTC)- "It's because it's wrong and needs to be fixed."
- Indeed. Agencies aren't works. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:39, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- Fortunately in this case the AP is not acting as an agent for itself. -- GreenC 20:29, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
- Sure, but either way, it's not a work. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:51, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
- There have been so many long and fruitless discussions about what should be italic and what not, going back years. At some point we ended up with the name of the website is the work, in italic, as imperfect and controversial as it might be. I understand you disagree, I'm not trying to convince you one way or another. I recall the discussions happened in Help talk:Citation Style 1 but I don't know when, sometime in the past 7 years I think. -- GreenC 21:48, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
- These are not the names of their websites either. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:57, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
- AP News is arguably a name of the website apnews dot com, which is different from ap dot org which is (arguably) named "The Associated Press" .. the later is for "products and services", the former for "stories". -- GreenC 01:18, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
- These are not the names of their websites either. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:57, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
- There have been so many long and fruitless discussions about what should be italic and what not, going back years. At some point we ended up with the name of the website is the work, in italic, as imperfect and controversial as it might be. I understand you disagree, I'm not trying to convince you one way or another. I recall the discussions happened in Help talk:Citation Style 1 but I don't know when, sometime in the past 7 years I think. -- GreenC 21:48, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
- Sure, but either way, it's not a work. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:51, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
- Fortunately in this case the AP is not acting as an agent for itself. -- GreenC 20:29, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
- Then have
Once I am back from survival training, I will look through all this and work on name mapping, since when the AP is a work vs when it is an agency, the name seems to be different. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:14, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
- I think this is now fixed. It should correctly change agency=AP to work=AP News and agency=Associated Press to work=Associated Press News for apnews.com. Instead of leaving the text unchanged. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:00, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
- Merci. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:35, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
The Times of India dates
- Status
- Fixed
- Reported by
- Kailash29792 (talk) 04:53, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- When the bot processes the TOI source, it adds the modified date instead of the publishing date.
- What should happen
- The bot should add the publishing date only. That date can be located under "datePublished" in the page's HTML source page and is in YMD format. In this case, it starts with "2015-07-23".
- Relevant diffs/links
- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=1169767469&oldid=1168510367&title=Aandavan_Kattalai_(2016_film)
This is an interesting question. When someone references a website, should they add the date for the first edition of the most recent edition. It is impossible to know what the editor intended. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:12, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
- Although the majority of pre-2017 articles include an "updated" date and show 14, 15 or 16 January as the one, there are virtually no changes in the article. Possible the website was restructured on thatSo I believe the publishing date is preferred here. Kailash29792 (talk) 04:21, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
- That date range really helped. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:03, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
|isbn=978-1-62410-609-5
The bot is adding this apparently bogus ISBN to TRAPPIST-1. Is there a way to stop it? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 18:28, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
- Your source is not a journal article but rather, is a paper in a conference proceedings: AIAA Scitech 2021 Forum (I got there from the doi). Use
{{cite conference}}
or{{cite book}}
. - So, not a but except that the bot should not be adding
|isbn=
to{{cite journal}}
(or any other periodical template). - —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:42, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
- The ISBN is correct, see https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/book/10.2514/MSCITECH21 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:58, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
- Compare [48], [49], [50]. --JBL (talk) 00:21, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
- Databases not being up to date does not mean the isbn is incorrect. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:36, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
- https://marketplace.copyright.com/rs-ui-web/mp/advanced-search/journal/result has it. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:44, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
- {{notabug}} - there is no central ISBN repository, unlike ISSN, DOI, Handle, PMID, S2CID, etc. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:38, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
- https://marketplace.copyright.com/rs-ui-web/mp/advanced-search/journal/result has it. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:44, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
- Databases not being up to date does not mean the isbn is incorrect. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:36, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
- Compare [48], [49], [50]. --JBL (talk) 00:21, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
- The ISBN is correct, see https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/book/10.2514/MSCITECH21 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:58, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
AAS is now open access
- What should happen
- Flag 10.3847/ DOIs with
|doi-access=free
LNCS citations cleanup
- What should happen
- [51]
Should probably apply to any other citations with a 10.1007/978-...
doi as well. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:02, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
Chapter url for books
- Status
- Fixed by adding those both to the 2chapter function.
- Reported by
- Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:11, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
- What should happen
- [52]
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Possibly recognizable by the /chapter/ in the url, or the 10.1007/978-3-030-58820-5_44 in the doi. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:11, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
Edit to "List of F5 and EF5 tornadoes"
- Status
- Won't fix, but still less than ideal.
- Reported by
- User-duck (talk) 07:00, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- [53]
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
I do not see a method were a bot can get information from scanned image or a web page where url-access=subscription.
List of F5 and EF5 tornadoes: "Bangor Daily Whig and Courier Archives, May 18, 1896, p. 1" obviously is not the title of a newspaper article published May 18, 1896. I know supplying a title results in one less "missing title" message, but is that really the goal of article edits? User-duck (talk) 07:00, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
Work parameter choice
- Status
- Fixed both websites to be listed correctly in bot's "bad zotero" list
- Reported by
- 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:12, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- Ordinary web page recategorised as a newspaper ({{cite web}} changed to {{cite news}}, etc)
- What should happen
- nothing
- Relevant diffs/links
- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=East_West_Rail&diff=1171066488&oldid=1169791581
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
It may be relevant that the text has two citations: (each in its own pair of ref tags, deleted for reader convenience)
The first is a campaign group, not a newspaper. The second is a newspaper but was not identified as such nor was the citation corrected. After manual corrections, the citations now read:
- "Coast-to-coast connectivity". East West Main Line Partnership.
- "Network Rail looks to build out from East West Rail". New Civil Engineer. 7 April 2022.
Source article: East West Rail. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:12, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
More LNCS cleanup
- What should happen
- [54]
More ACM conferences
More IEEE conferences
Got it. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:40, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
More LNCS
Bunch more done. On another note, can you comment on "dates" above. It seems like a good idea. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 00:29, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
- Bot seems to finally have gotten the message on LNCS!
- If you could do the same for Lectures Notes in Mathematics, and Lectures Notes in Physics, that would also be great. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:39, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
Also, after I added the chapter to the doi [63], I had to TNT the title to get it to add the chapter [64]. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:51, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
- More lecture notes added. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:01, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
Remove OUP error page URL
- Status
- {{fixed}} - will often not get a DOI though, but does fix URLs - probably refill caused this
- Reported by
- Nemo 05:09, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- We have over a hundred articles with citations which link an error page devoid of any information, academic.oup.com/crawlprevention .
- What should happen
- If the citation provides a title or other sufficient information, the URL should be removed and replaced with a matching DOI: special:diff/1171962321.
- Replication instructions
- I didn't check histories, maybe it's citoid or some bot getting hit by OUP rate limits.
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Fixing journal to conference violates WP:CITEVAR by changing Citation Style 2 to Citation Style 1
- Status
- {{fixed}}
- Reported by
- —David Eppstein (talk) 08:15, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- Fixing journal to conference violates WP:CITEVAR by changing Citation Style 2 to Citation Style 1
- Relevant diffs/links
- Twice in two successive edits: [66]
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Specifically, it's the changing of {{citation}} to {{cite book}} that violates CITEVAR, not fixing conferences cited as journals. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:44, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
- Perhaps we should add
|mode=cs2<!- due to change from cs2 template -->
or something similar. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 12:42, 24 August 2023 (UTC)- The bot has done this for years, because the parameters were incompatible with {{citation}}, but not {{cite book}}. The recent changes to {{cite book}} mean that it now throws the same error. So, the code is now removed. Anyone who actually read the bots output would see "CS2 template has incompatible parameters. Changing to CS1 cite book. Please verify." AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:30, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
- It is a bug that the bot changes CS2 to CS1, even in cases where {{citation}} has incompatible parameters. The correction would be to add
|mode=cs2
to the changed template. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:45, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
- It is a bug that the bot changes CS2 to CS1, even in cases where {{citation}} has incompatible parameters. The correction would be to add
- The bot has done this for years, because the parameters were incompatible with {{citation}}, but not {{cite book}}. The recent changes to {{cite book}} mean that it now throws the same error. So, the code is now removed. Anyone who actually read the bots output would see "CS2 template has incompatible parameters. Changing to CS1 cite book. Please verify." AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:30, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
Drops title of encyclopedia article while neglecting to convert from cite journal to cite encyclopedia
- Status
- {{fixed}} - DOI was for book, not the chapter. Bot now detects that.
- Reported by
- —David Eppstein (talk) 09:21, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- Special:Diff/1171990643
- What should happen
- not that
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Title emptied
- Status
- {{notabug}} - the existing title was wrong
- Reported by
- Tacsipacsi (talk) 23:59, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- The first template change in the below diff emptied the
|title=
parameter, making the article end up in Category:CS1 errors: missing title. This is definitely not what should happen. - Relevant diffs/links
- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ELTE_Faculty_of_Science&diff=1172041218
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Publisher now preferred for cite book
- Status
- {{fixed}} - code changed to match new preferred template style
- Reported by
- {{u|Sdkb}} talk 17:43, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- There was a book citation that mistakenly had
|website=MIT Press
and|publisher=MIT Press
. The book citation template no longer displays the website parameter. The bot removes the publisher parameter, causing the publisher information to no longer be visible to the reader. - What should happen
- The bot should have removed the website parameter instead (the correct course of action) or done nothing (better than what it actually did, which made the error worse).
- Relevant diffs/links
- Special:Diff/1172206170
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
More conference cleanup
Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:03, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
- Got 'em. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:29, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
- If you're wondering, those really make a difference. In the last dump, the bot managed to clean about 1700 conference proceedings (1468 ACM, 157 IEEE, 18 SPIE, 53 Atlantis Press). That was on top of the previous dump's cleanup effort, which cleaned 15 ACM, 2431 IEEE, and no SPIE/Atlantis. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:00, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
More
Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:25, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
chapter and title the same
- Status
- {{fixed}} on specific page, and also should be less likely now
- Reported by
- —Caorongjin 💬 20:50, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- It stripped the title parameter from a
{{cite book}}
when there was a chapter title listed. - What should happen
- Nothing
- Relevant diffs/links
- Diff
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Missed some redundant pubmed/pmc urls
- What should happen
- [74]
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Looks like fragments should be ignored. Another common one is https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/elink.fcgi?dbfrom=pubmed URLs. Nemo 15:50, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
Sr.wiki
Hi, again. Can you run your bot through sr.wiki? There are too many articles with partially filled citation templates. An by the way, why does bot remove ref=harv? KrleNS (talk) 03:40, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
- ref=harv is the default for newer template versions. On en and simple, ref=harv generates a warning message. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:20, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
- See Template:HarvErrors for the longer explanation. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:48, 30 July 2023 (UTC)
- But without ref=harv or something like that, harv and sfn template don't jump to source in cite book or journal templates. --KrleNS (talk) 01:07, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
- Did you read Template:HarvErrors? Because you're about 3 years out of date here (on enwiki). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:08, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
- To be honest, just cursory, didn't find where to look. Is there any chance of running Citation bot at sr.wiki? I manually run the bot for almost a month, I am fed up with cleaning after google-translate editors KrleNS (talk) 03:14, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
- lastautamp etc also have changed. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:29, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
- To be honest, just cursory, didn't find where to look. Is there any chance of running Citation bot at sr.wiki? I manually run the bot for almost a month, I am fed up with cleaning after google-translate editors KrleNS (talk) 03:14, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
- Did you read Template:HarvErrors? Because you're about 3 years out of date here (on enwiki). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:08, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
- But without ref=harv or something like that, harv and sfn template don't jump to source in cite book or journal templates. --KrleNS (talk) 01:07, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
- I forgot to ask: is this bot manually operated or run via terminal? --KrleNS (talk) 02:04, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- Some of both. Usually Wiki Kubwernetis cluster as directed by users. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 02:38, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- What is required to run automatically? I'm tired, I fix 100+ articles daily KrleNS (talk) 03:03, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- The citation template infrastructure must be updated to match the en one first. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 00:50, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
- What is required to run automatically? I'm tired, I fix 100+ articles daily KrleNS (talk) 03:03, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- Some of both. Usually Wiki Kubwernetis cluster as directed by users. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 02:38, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- I forgot to ask: is this bot manually operated or run via terminal? --KrleNS (talk) 02:04, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
Added incorrect date of January 0001
- Status
- Fixed
- Reported by
- GoingBatty (talk) 15:46, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- Added
|date=January 0001
- What should happen
- Add correct date or no date
- Relevant diffs/links
- Special:Diff/884504814
Added date in 2029
- Status
- Fixed
- Reported by
- GoingBatty (talk) 15:28, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- added
|date=January 15, 2029
- What should happen
- add correct date or none at all
- Relevant diffs/links
- Special:Diff/1172679249
More ACM cleanup
Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:38, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
- {{wontfix}} completely (some tweaks made) - low quality meta-data. Did clean up some by hand though. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:19, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review
Caps: ISPRS
- What should happen
- [78]
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Spurious addition of a journal to a book citation
Capitalizes "of" in proceedings title
- Status
- {{fixed}}
- Reported by
- —David Eppstein (talk) 21:34, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
- What should happen
- Not that. Also the bot missed an opportunity for a journal-to-conference conversion.
- Relevant diffs/links
- Special:Diff/1173189644
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
adding chapter
- Status
- {{wontfix}}, since seems to always need human intervention
- Reported by
- Trappist the monk (talk) 13:27, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- bot correctly added
|chapter=
to a{{citation}}
template that used a|work=
alias (|journal=
,|magazine=
,|newspaper=
,|periodical=
,|website=
). Aliases of|work=
cause{{citation}}
to treat the source as a periodical so Module:Citation/CS1 rejects|chapter=
and aliases (|contribution=
,|entry=
,|article=
,|section=
). It has been ever thus with{{citation}}
- What should happen
- when it is correct to include a
|chapter=
alias in a{{citation}}
template, remove any|work=
alias - Relevant diffs/links
- diff
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
These are very rare, and usually point to the need for a human to step up and fix the citation. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:21, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
More Roman numerals
- Status
- {{fixed}}
- Reported by
- Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 19:54, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
|journal=Vii: Journal of the Marion E. Wade Center
- What should happen
|journal=VII: Journal of the Marion E. Wade Center
- Relevant diffs/links
- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AJosve05a%2Fsandbox&diff=prev&oldid=1173335588
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Unnecessary date parameter
- Status
- {{fixed}}
- Reported by
- Demetrios1993 (talk) 02:03, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- The bot added
|date=
, while the reference already included|publication-date=
and|orig-date=
. - What should happen
- The bot shouldn't add
|date=
when the reference already includes alternative parameters, such as the ones mentioned above. - Relevant diffs/links
- diff
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Caps: IRE
- What should happen
- [81]
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Unnecessary changes
- Status
- {{fixed}} - added more filtering of Zotero data
- Reported by
- Demetrios1993 (talk) 16:22, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- The bot changed
|page=19
to|pages=σελ. 15–21 Pages
- What should happen
- Not that
- Relevant diffs/links
- diff
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
"|title=usurped title"
"usurped title" is generated by WP:WAYBACKMEDIC when repairing WP:JUDI usurpations. Example. Would Citation bot be able to extract a good title from the archive URL, and replace the placeholder title? If not I can try, but have not developed any code for HTML titles which is presumably more complicated than it seems due to other stuff that can end up in the title string of a page. -- GreenC 04:31, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
- {{fixed}} and now running. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:23, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
- If that is the case, then certainly the bot can be turned to Category:CS1 maint: archived copy as title (52,731) to clear that category.
- —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:35, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
- it is already running on that category. The problem is that the many of the titles are "dubious", so by default most titles are rejected. I have special version on my desktop that I have been running for months, that lets me type "y" to dubious ones and accept them. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:20, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
- Presumably then, titles for the
|title=usurped title
references fall in the same sort dubious/not-dubious classifications. Given that, would it be a good idea to have cs1|2 emit an error message for|title=usurped title
(and ultimately for|title=Archived copy
) so that human editors can see and fix these templates? Of course there will be the crowd of editors who will throw refill at the articles listed in the error category creating more junk titles, and so round and round and round and round and round ... sigh. - —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:32, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
- Presumably then, titles for the
- it is already running on that category. The problem is that the many of the titles are "dubious", so by default most titles are rejected. I have special version on my desktop that I have been running for months, that lets me type "y" to dubious ones and accept them. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:20, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
- Thank you, User:AManWithNoPlan! As background, the primary way we discover new WP:JUDI usurpation cases is by manually searching for known words in titles like "Judi", "Slots", etc.. which are often inserted by refill and Citation bot when expanding incomplete cites. This happens because when the citation was originally created without a title, the domain was not usurped. Later, the domain expired and was taken over by a spam master who redirected/sold it to spam clients. Then our tools unwittingly add the spam title. The whole thing is ironically dependent on refill and CB inserting spam titles. Dubious titles are thus key for discovering usurped domains. This is the regex I use to identify JUDI titles (case insensitive, false-positive possible):
((Hongkong|HK|Result|Toto) (HK|Pools|Prize)|Togle Live|Live (Casino|Draw|Slot)|(Casino|Slot|Bola|Judi|Game|Gacor) Online|Roulette Blog|[^| ](Mostbet([.]com)?|Terpercaya|Judi|Situs|Daftar|Keluaran|Keluaran|Pengeluaran|Siteleri|Canli|Bahis|Bonusu|Dotdash)($|[ ]))
- If you come across any of these I would be interested to add them to WP:JUDI for usurpation. And any new variations also. -- GreenC 18:24, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
cleanup wjgnet urls after doi-access=free
- What should happen
- [82]
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
cite book no longer allow website=
- Status
- {{fixed}} about 10,000 pages fixed
- Reported by
- User:GreatPersonLikeMe 00:46, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
The bot continued to disrupted the natural content by changing from web form reference to book form make it said an error: Website = ignored(help). Hope you fix that error as soon as possible. Thanks.
- Without an example, it is hard to fix. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:11, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
- This just came into being: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:CS1_errors:_periodical_ignored AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:50, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
- I am doing a study of this, and will soon implements a bunch of whitelists that will based upon the information contained:
- This just came into being: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:CS1_errors:_periodical_ignored AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:50, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
- do nothing
- title->chapter and work->title
- work->via
- delete work, if same as title (will be a bit fuzzy such as "who's who" vs "whoswho.com").
- work->series
Most will require a human being though. The bot has already gotten rid of about 2000 such pages with the existing lists. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:51, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
free URLs
- Status
- {{fixed}} by adding website to publishers list. {{notabug}} since some should be added and some removed. Last, as for the DOI {{wontfix}}, but I have reported the DOI as not free to open access database
- Reported by
- ―Susmuffin Talk 17:49, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- One "proxy/dead URL that duplicated identifier" was removed, but a different one for a different website was added.
- What should happen
- It should be consistent.
- Relevant diffs/links
- [83]
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Valid URLs in citations flagged as 'dead' and Access Date removed
- Status
- {{not a bug}}
- Reported by
- Chrisdevelop (talk) 13:24, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- valid URL and access date removed
- Relevant diffs/links
- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=University_of_Edinburgh&diff=next&oldid=1174728858
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
This ref: Firn, David (March 1999). "Roslin Institute upset by human cloning suggestions". Nature Medicine. 5 (3): 253. doi:10.1038/6449. PMID 10086368. S2CID 41278352. Retrieved 13 September 2021.
and this ref: Doyle, Derek (2006). "William Hewson (1739-74): The father of haematology". British Journal of Haematology. 133 (4): 375–381. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2141.2006.06037.x. PMID 16643443. S2CID 35774229.
- I was able to open both the deleted URLs that the bot flagged as 'dead' and deleted: https://www.nature.com/articles/nm0399_253a?pagewanted=all and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16643443/#:~:text=William%20Hewson%20(1739%2D74)%3A%20the%20father%20of%20haematology
I have reverted the edit for now. Can someone please go through the effects of this bot? Chrisdevelop (talk) 13:24, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
- The bot's edits were correct. For Nature, doi:10.1038/6449 takes you to https://www.nature.com/articles/nm0399_253a; same as the value in
|url=
without the query string. Because|doi-access=free
,|doi=
links|title=
. For British Journal of Haematology PMID 16643443 takes you to https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16643443/; same as the value in|url=
without all of that google-highlight-string nonsense. Because PMID links are not links to the source, they do not belong in|url=
. - Neither were
flagged as 'dead'
. Removal of|access-date=
when|url=
is removed is correct because without|url=
,|access-date=
causes Module:Citation/CS1 to emit an error message: - You should revert yourself.
- —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:52, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for the explanation - reversion reverted. It was the bot wording "Removed proxy/dead URL that duplicated identifier" that suggested URL death. Chrisdevelop (talk) 14:56, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
- proxy/dead suggests either a proxy or url death, not just url death. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:16, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
- An improvement to the bot would be to state which of the two it is, since it knows what task it carried out. Chrisdevelop (talk) 21:14, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
- That would be an improvement, but edit summary length limits require brevity. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 02:06, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
- 'Proxy' or 'Dead' is shorter than 'proxy/dead'. Chrisdevelop (talk) 04:00, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
- That would be an improvement, but edit summary length limits require brevity. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 02:06, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
- An improvement to the bot would be to state which of the two it is, since it knows what task it carried out. Chrisdevelop (talk) 21:14, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
- proxy/dead suggests either a proxy or url death, not just url death. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:16, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for the explanation - reversion reverted. It was the bot wording "Removed proxy/dead URL that duplicated identifier" that suggested URL death. Chrisdevelop (talk) 14:56, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
caps: Indian Journal of Sexually Transmitted Diseases and AIDS
- What should happen
- [84]
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
elonet.finna.fi
- Status
- {{fixed}}
- Reported by
- —Kusma (talk) 18:22, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- Citation bot changed a {{Cite web}} citation to a database started in 2006 (Elonet) by a {{Cite book}} template without adding any bibliographical data about what book that might be, just adding a publication date in 1989 that must be from elsewhere, as 1989 is before 2006. If there is a book with this information it would be nice to know, but the bot edit was no help.
- Relevant diffs/links
- [85]
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Thank you for the report, I have added that to the NO_DATE_WEBSITES list. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:01, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
- I just did some further testing, and I have added that to the ZOTERO_AVOID_REGEX list. Wiki's Zotero is really bad on that website. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:01, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Eumycetoma
- Status
- {{fixed}} on page
- Reported by
- awkwafaba (📥) 15:54, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- Bot fails on Eumycetoma
- Replication instructions
- I've run the bot from the edit page on the article, as well as from the main form. Tried thorough and not. It just times out (502 Bad Gateway nginx/1.14.2). Other citation tools like ReFill, OABot, and IAbot have no problems.
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
When users cite the URL https://www.theweek.in/ , under =website
or =work
they link The Week. This is incorrect, as the link should be The Week. Can the bot change existing URLs using the former link to the new one? Kailash29792 (talk) 04:51, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
- @Kailash29792: My bot already does something similar for The Wire vs. The Wire (India) and The Week vs. The Week (Brisbane) so I've updated it to also change the appropriate references from The Week to The Week (Indian magazine). It just fixed 61 links for The Week, and I've added it to the list of links I check daily. I'll also check the links that are not part of citations. GoingBatty (talk) 13:55, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
- @Kailash29792: http://www.the-week.com redirects to https://www.theweek.in so those wikilinks should be changed too. GoingBatty (talk) 14:10, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
- To quote a legend, just do it. Kailash29792 (talk) 14:11, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
- @Kailash29792: http://www.the-week.com redirects to https://www.theweek.in so those wikilinks should be changed too. GoingBatty (talk) 14:10, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
{{fixed}} - flag for archive. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:06, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
Whitelist some more cleanup categories for automated runs
- Category:CS1 errors: invisible characters
- Category:CS1 maint: bibcode
- Category:CS1 maint: extra punctuation
Citation bot can deal with the vast majority of the cases that prop up in these categories. The one-click treatment activated by anyone would be good. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:02, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
{{fixed}} — Preceding unsigned comment added by AManWithNoPlan (talk • contribs)
- @AManWithNoPlan: the invisible characters wasn't implemented. And the ref=harv category is long deleted and can be removed. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:17, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
- {{fixed}}. I got interrupted mid-edit, and lost my place in the process. Which is pretty silly considering how small the edit was. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:44, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
Mojibake from emoji in article title
- Status
- {{fixed}}
- Reported by
- —David Eppstein (talk) 13:55, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- Citation to article with an emoji in its title (yes, really) is turned into some garbage characters by the bot, as part of other (correct) conversion of conference paper from cite journal to cite book
- What should happen
- not that
- Relevant diffs/links
- Special:Diff/1172011880
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Springer Link subtitle eaten and chapter title italics stripped
- Status
- {{fixed}}
- Reported by
- ―Susmuffin Talk 23:28, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- The subtitle was eaten and the italics in the chapter title were stripped.
- What should happen
- Not that
- Relevant diffs/links
- [86]
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
@Susmuffin: that link is borked. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:42, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
- Special:Diff/1173359474
- —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:53, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
- Also, as a GBooks link that includes the starting page number of the chapter, the
|url=
should have been converted into|chapter-url=
. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:50, 2 September 2023 (UTC)- PA1 is never converted, because it is often just the book link. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:28, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
- Also, as a GBooks link that includes the starting page number of the chapter, the
Subtitles are still being eaten: Special:Diff/1176076741. This example is an especially bad case because the version of the title without the subtitles looks like the name of one of the main journals in this area. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:06, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
IndiaGlitz
Many sources use this in the publisher field rather than website. I'd appreciate this not be the case. Kailash29792 (talk) 08:47, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
Removal of links to related articles
- Status
- {{fixed}} - will not remove extraneous links if the title contained "reviewed work"
- Reported by
- Chrisdevelop (talk) 18:44, 14 September 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- valid links removed
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Why has this edit removed all the links to articles related to what the author reviewed?
Treat Suppl. as Suppl
- What should happen
- [87]
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
The pattern should be \| *volume *= *\d+ *Suppl\.? *\d+
instead of \| *volume *= *\d+ *Suppl *\d+
Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:44, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
Dates
Hi Smith, I have a doubt. I noticed this bot adds dates in the DMY format, but – since Wikipedia is a multilingual project and pages get always translated to other languages – wouldn't be more useful to adopt the YYYY-MM-DD format? Citation templates can automatically translate it to the project language. Est. 2021 (talk · contribs) 12:36, 17 August 2023 (UTC)
- The bot should add dates in the specified format when articles have specified a preference ({{Use DMY dates}}, {{Use MDY dates}}, etc...). If there's no template specifying a format, the bot could guess at which format is used more, but really it should just default to international dates (3 January 2014) when it's unsure. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:32, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
- Everyone and every bot should use dd mmmmm yyyy at all times on Wikipedia and everywhere else. Abductive (reasoning) 22:53, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
- @Abductive: No, please see MOS:DATEFORMAT. GoingBatty (talk) 02:31, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
- I'm just expressing my personal preference. Abductive (reasoning) 02:33, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
- @Abductive: No, please see MOS:DATEFORMAT. GoingBatty (talk) 02:31, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
- Everyone and every bot should use dd mmmmm yyyy at all times on Wikipedia and everywhere else. Abductive (reasoning) 22:53, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
journal/series in book cleanup
- What should happen
- [88]
Add pages from Googlebooks
- Status
- will not do - human editors are idiots and add GB URLs that are more specific than they intend and I have found ONE example of the page numbers not matching the books
- Reported by
- Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:22, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- *
{{cite book |url=https://books.google.dk/books?id=dsfq_5dFeL0C&pg=PA2211&lpg=PA2211&dq=grosses+s%C3%A4ngerlexikon+Johanna+Jachmann-Wagner&source=bl&ots=b0VUydnINr&sig=ACfU3U0N_yjiZ5kAIqFMTi5ycPLe5efnmw&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=grosses%20s%C3%A4ngerlexikon%20Johanna%20Jachmann-Wagner&f=false}}
the bot expands to
- Kutsch, Karl-Josef; Riemens, Leo (22 February 2012). Großes Sängerlexikon. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 9783598440885.
- What should happen
- same, but also add out
|page=2211
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
You assume that the PA number is the same as the page number. That is not always the case, unless Google has fixed that. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:00, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- Hmm, I'll check a couple more and see if they fixed it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:11, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- The other problem is the vast number of people adding links that have the page in them, but are actually focused on the search. Or all the people that a just linking to the book itself and the URL just happens to have a page number in it. I think you give the people who use Google Books URLs way too much credit. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:27, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- In which case the URL needs an updating. This just exposes the issue. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:11, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- After inspect roughly ~100-120 googlebooks links, at least as far as books are concerned, the page numbers from the URL seem accurate.
- PA### = normal (arabic) page numbers
- PR### = roman page numbers
- PT### = possibly ebook internal numbering? I can't find anything concrete about this.
- PP### = possibly internal numbering for preamble pages/pages prior to numbering?
- RA### = no idea. Often in the RA###-PA#### format (or -PT####, -#PP####), where the second part links to something concrete.
- I'm going to keep investigating. So far, I found no mismatches for PA and PR formats, which are the ones that should be extracted into
|page=530
for PA530 or|page=xvii
for PR17. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:02, 2 August 2023 (UTC)- That all looks really good. This fits with what I have seen with some being "wrong", but with this information, it seems like we know which ones to use. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:42, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- Yeah, as long as the bot sticks to PA and PR, it should be fine. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:50, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- And not if the url has q= in it (dq= looks like it is okay). AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:53, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- Well q gives a bunch of quotes. The PA still identifies which was meant. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:55, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Google_books provides page insight that matches what you found. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:58, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- If I replace the url with Template:Google Books, the bot doesn't seem to be able to expand the reference template (cite book). Example:
{{cite book |url={{Google books|id=dsfq_5dFeL0C|page=2211|plainurl=yes}}}}
--SilverMatsu (talk) 16:31, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
- If I replace the url with Template:Google Books, the bot doesn't seem to be able to expand the reference template (cite book). Example:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Google_books provides page insight that matches what you found. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:58, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- Well q gives a bunch of quotes. The PA still identifies which was meant. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:55, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- And not if the url has q= in it (dq= looks like it is okay). AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:53, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- Yeah, as long as the bot sticks to PA and PR, it should be fine. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:50, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- That all looks really good. This fits with what I have seen with some being "wrong", but with this information, it seems like we know which ones to use. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:42, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- In which case the URL needs an updating. This just exposes the issue. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:11, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- The other problem is the vast number of people adding links that have the page in them, but are actually focused on the search. Or all the people that a just linking to the book itself and the URL just happens to have a page number in it. I think you give the people who use Google Books URLs way too much credit. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:27, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- Hmm, I'll check a couple more and see if they fixed it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:11, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
- 99% of the time, the URL should not have both a q/dq and a page (people should pick the right one). AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:59, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- Do you need to know anything more before implementing a fix here? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:14, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- I'd rather that we didn't do this, since we dont know if the intent was to claim that a specific page covers a statement where the ref is attached. Most times usage of the Google Books by users link is not intended to point to a specific page from what I can tell... Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 19:23, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- In which case this exposes the problem, rather than keep it hidden. So far, I in the 150 or so links I checked, all links that resolved to somewhere visible pointed to the correct place to support the assertions. Links without pages in them (e.g. those you get just by search for the book on google scholar) still won't have pages added to them. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:26, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- As long as the URL still point to the page if linked to, but not stated in the article explicitly unless manually specified by the editor, that should be a good enough trade-off in my opinion. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 19:29, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- Hiding errors is never good. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:11, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- A sloppily copied URL is not an error, just misc tidying needed in the majority of cases. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 20:12, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- It is an error when it takes you to the wrong page. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:19, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- True, but often the URL takes you to the landing page, since the book not longer allows previews. GB has many issues. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:22, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
- It is an error when it takes you to the wrong page. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:19, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- A sloppily copied URL is not an error, just misc tidying needed in the majority of cases. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 20:12, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- Hiding errors is never good. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:11, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- As long as the URL still point to the page if linked to, but not stated in the article explicitly unless manually specified by the editor, that should be a good enough trade-off in my opinion. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 19:29, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- In which case this exposes the problem, rather than keep it hidden. So far, I in the 150 or so links I checked, all links that resolved to somewhere visible pointed to the correct place to support the assertions. Links without pages in them (e.g. those you get just by search for the book on google scholar) still won't have pages added to them. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:26, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- I'd rather that we didn't do this, since we dont know if the intent was to claim that a specific page covers a statement where the ref is attached. Most times usage of the Google Books by users link is not intended to point to a specific page from what I can tell... Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 19:23, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- Do you need to know anything more before implementing a fix here? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:14, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
- I'd love to see a community maintained document about how GB links work. The above discussion is a trove of hard-won experience that is not documented anywhere. GB is a black box that requires a lot of discovery effort. GB indeed has many issues. We have more GB links than all other book providers combined. -- GreenC 02:09, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
- The other good place to start is the bot source code. ( https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/blob/master/expandFns.php#L1421 function normalize_google_books ) It has grown out of pain an suffering of trying to understand GB. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 02:26, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
- Added to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Google_books/doc so, now flagging as Won't fix to archive. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:40, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
|pages= value from doi suffix
- Status
- Fixed - any thing more than 50,000 is rejected
- Reported by
- Trappist the monk (talk) 00:49, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- Bot created
|pages=1176934318788866
from|doi=10.1177/1176934318788866
. This is an old edit (5 October 2018) but I've been noticing this more often lately and this is the one that provoked me into creating this bug report. - Relevant diffs/links
- diff
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Adds tech report metadata as "journal" to dissertation
- Status
- Fixed
- Reported by
- —David Eppstein (talk) 16:59, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- On Conilee Kirkpatrick, it took a citation for a doctoral dissertation, tried to change it into a citation for a tech report (presumably a preprint of the dissertation), and failed badly, putting the tech report metadata into a
|journal=
parameter - What should happen
- Not that. The citation does not need the tech report metadata at all, and it should not be formatted as a journal.
- Relevant diffs/links
- Special:Diff/1176535162
- @David Eppstein: Did you mean Special:Diff/1176535162? GoingBatty (talk) 19:07, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
- Yes, I must have copied the oldid instead of the diff. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:29, 22 September 2023 (UTC)
Sr.wiki
What is required to run bot automatically on sr.wiki. There is backlog containing thousands of articles, I run it manually, but it would take few years to clean it --KrleNS (talk) 02:18, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
- The CS1/2 templates need updated to latests versions. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:10, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
Journal-to-conference conversion fails to add title and editors of book, leaving paper title formatted as book title
- Status
- Fixed - might have to run bot more than once, and editors are not in CrossRef meta-data, so we won't get those
- Reported by
- —David Eppstein (talk) 01:57, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- Special:Diff/1173367139
- What should happen
- Special:Diff/1173378925
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
CS1 maint: url-status
Hi there! Would it be possible to enhance Citation bot to remove Category:CS1 maint: url-status issues? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 14:48, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
- {{fixed}} and running like crazy. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:45, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
- @AManWithNoPlan: Fabulous! When it's stopped running, could you please add a Citation bot link to the top of the category page, like there is on categories such as Category:CS1 errors: invisible characters? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:35, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
Untitled_new_bug
- Status
- Fixed with flag on pagge Toothfish Day
- Reported by
- awkwafaba (📥) 17:31, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- reported a museum website as news, and decided a link was no longer alive
- What should happen
- none of that
- Relevant diffs/links
- https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Toothfish+Day&diff=prev&oldid=1177453500
- Replication instructions
- not sure
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Incorrect replacement of findarticles URL with DOI URL
- Status
- {{fixed}}
- Reported by
- — Chris Capoccia 💬 15:19, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
- What happens
- Citation bot replaces findarticles URL with DOI URL duplicating DOI and creating mismatch with archive URL. This edit makes no sense. Should not create mismatch with archive URL. Should not add URL redundant to DOI.
- Relevant diffs/links
- diff
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
I see, the worthless findarticles url was "fixed", but the bot did not realize the archive was there. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:48, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
Untiterror in naming of the author of Beocom 1401: the author and Designer is Martin Iseli Bern Switzerland. Please correct this. www.iselidesign.ch
- Status
- new bug
- Reported by
- 178.197.177.250 (talk) 15:05, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
- We can't proceed until
- Feedback from maintainers
Cosmetic edits
I frequently see this bot making cosmetic edits like this one. Could it be programmed to alert editors when they're about to make a cosmetic edit to discourage it? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 17:03, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
- I know from experience with large complex kitchen-sink bots it can be difficult prevent cosmetic edits, it should be seen a best effort. "Frequently" would have to be quantified maybe there are some specific types of edits that could be optimized. -- GreenC 17:27, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
Removing url-status = live
Can I ask what the purpose of this sort of edit is? I understand that the url-status field is only useful when the archive-url is present, but the website cited here, philsp.com, has two kinds of URL: one which is very stable, and another kind which is autogenerated and should be archived quickly and marked as dead even whin technically it isn't, as it soon will be. The URLs here are the stable kind, so though I don't remember what was in my mind when I cited this, I probably marked them as live so that when I later added the archive links it would not treat them as dead. Normally I add the archive links as I go but perhaps archive.org was uncooperative that day. I assume there's a good reason for removing these, but I can't figure it out and would be glad of an explanation. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:09, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:CS1_maint:_url-status AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:11, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks -- that explains what's happening, but what's actually wrong with it the way it was? There's nothing inaccurate about that state of the citation. Why is it regarded as an error? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- I'm likewise concerned that this goes against WP:COSMETICBOT. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 02:11, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- @Mike Christie: Category:CS1 maint: url-status states "While not an error, CS1 and CS2 templates that have
|url-status=
but not|archive-url=
should be repaired." GoingBatty (talk) 02:46, 27 September 2023 (UTC)- I see that. I'd have no objection (of course) to someone adding the archive information, which is one of the two suggested changes there. The other suggested change, removing the url-status=live parameter, seems wrong to me. It's not an error (as you quote) and it conveys true information; removing it deletes information. I think the bot should not be doing this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:49, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate database of whether every website linked is live; the piles and piles of mark up that some editors seem to want to shovel into the site make it actually more difficult for other editors to work on articles and add extremely little of value. The CS1
|url-status=
parameter is used for exactly one purpose, which is whether the archive link should be placed at the title rather than appended. If it is live and there is no archive URL doing so generates CS1 maintenance markup and it should be purged. Ifly6 (talk) 02:57, 27 September 2023 (UTC)- I'm not convinced, but I'm not going to fight about it; it's not that big a deal. I can see why Sdkb considers this a cosmetic edit, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if others agree. I'll also say that when I added that parameter I wasn't doing so just to tag the link as live, as a bit of markup; I would have intended it to be used exactly as described - when I went back to add the archive url it would need to be there. But let's see if anyone else complains; the bot is doing a lot of these edits and perhaps others will stop by here as a result. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:06, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate database of whether every website linked is live; the piles and piles of mark up that some editors seem to want to shovel into the site make it actually more difficult for other editors to work on articles and add extremely little of value. The CS1
- I see that. I'd have no objection (of course) to someone adding the archive information, which is one of the two suggested changes there. The other suggested change, removing the url-status=live parameter, seems wrong to me. It's not an error (as you quote) and it conveys true information; removing it deletes information. I think the bot should not be doing this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:49, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- I agree. This looks like a cosmetic bot edit. It's removing the info that a human editor had verified it's still live. Newystats (talk) 22:59, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- All URLs are assumed alive, thus the parameter adds nothing (What value is there in someone re-stating that the URL that I just added is not rubbish). Secondly, it just shows that at some point in the past the URL was supposedly alive. It is not magically updated or changed when the URL dies. The correct parameter is
|access-date=
which actually says when the alive occurred. This also encourages the bad habit of setting url-status=dead. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 00:12, 28 September 2023 (UTC)- I think I have a good reason using for using both "alive" and "dead". This is a stable URL from philsp.com; it will probably stay active for many years. This is from the same website and is not stable; I cite scores of these for establishing authorship of stories. Those pages are regenerated every couple of months and the URLs change. When I add one of those with an archive link, I go ahead and mark the link as dead explicitly so that it's clear to other editors that there's a reason to do so, even though it's not dead. I do that to prevent them marking it "live", which people will do to avoid prioritizing the slow archive link. I try to always add archive links for both these types of link, but for the stable kind I'm doing so only because of the risk of long-term entropy. No user wants to go to the slow IA link if the regular link is still alive, and if it's not it won't have deteriorated; it just won't be there. And I make sure there is an archive link (unless archive.org is down when I'm editing) so that when it eventually goes away there is an archive link and another editor can change the status from live to dead. I think a fundamental issue here is "who does the definition of these parameters belong to"? Initially it belongs to whoever creates the template but if the parameters start getting used by the community in ways you do not expect we have to have a discussion about whether they're wrong to do so. Of course I and the others complaining here might be in a small minority, but I have yet to see evidence elsewhere that there is substantial support for the point of view you're expressing. I think it would be friendly of you to stop the bot run on this, and ask for more input, unless you can show a discussion with more consensus than you've pointed to so far. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:48, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- The reality is the no one can count on live or dead being set, since only a very few editors use it in that that way. The correct parameter is
|access-date=
for live urls. Also, {{deadlink}} is the proper way to flag a truly dead link. Add|url-status=dead
is not visible to most users. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:51, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- The reality is the no one can count on live or dead being set, since only a very few editors use it in that that way. The correct parameter is
- I think I have a good reason using for using both "alive" and "dead". This is a stable URL from philsp.com; it will probably stay active for many years. This is from the same website and is not stable; I cite scores of these for establishing authorship of stories. Those pages are regenerated every couple of months and the URLs change. When I add one of those with an archive link, I go ahead and mark the link as dead explicitly so that it's clear to other editors that there's a reason to do so, even though it's not dead. I do that to prevent them marking it "live", which people will do to avoid prioritizing the slow archive link. I try to always add archive links for both these types of link, but for the stable kind I'm doing so only because of the risk of long-term entropy. No user wants to go to the slow IA link if the regular link is still alive, and if it's not it won't have deteriorated; it just won't be there. And I make sure there is an archive link (unless archive.org is down when I'm editing) so that when it eventually goes away there is an archive link and another editor can change the status from live to dead. I think a fundamental issue here is "who does the definition of these parameters belong to"? Initially it belongs to whoever creates the template but if the parameters start getting used by the community in ways you do not expect we have to have a discussion about whether they're wrong to do so. Of course I and the others complaining here might be in a small minority, but I have yet to see evidence elsewhere that there is substantial support for the point of view you're expressing. I think it would be friendly of you to stop the bot run on this, and ask for more input, unless you can show a discussion with more consensus than you've pointed to so far. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:48, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- All URLs are assumed alive, thus the parameter adds nothing (What value is there in someone re-stating that the URL that I just added is not rubbish). Secondly, it just shows that at some point in the past the URL was supposedly alive. It is not magically updated or changed when the URL dies. The correct parameter is
- Thanks -- that explains what's happening, but what's actually wrong with it the way it was? There's nothing inaccurate about that state of the citation. Why is it regarded as an error? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- I am also annoyed with these. Even if we take it for granted that the bot should try to eventually clean up these parameters, it should be done in the course of making substantively meaningful edits. These kinds of edits are exactly what WP:COSMETICBOT is about.
- A bot spamming everyone's watchlists with a bunch of changes consisting of nothing but removing "url-status=live" from a few links is disruptive and serves no beneficial purpose for the project. These do not urgently need to be changed. –jacobolus (t) 05:09, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- Having stray parameters around can contribute to errors like this and probably other forms of entropy. Cosmetic edits. Ok so we eliminate them quickly, or we do it slowly with other edits. My bot has been deleting them - with other edits - for 7 years, the quantity is huge. Where do they come from at this scale? Surely not misunderstandings by manual editors. I have not investigated but suspect VE. -- GreenC 05:20, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- If I'd wanted to participate in the initial conversation that defined this state of parameters as an error that needed fixing, where would I have found that? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:57, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- I don't understand what your link is showing me. Can you explain what you mean by "errors like this and probably other forms of entropy"? From what I can tell including this parameter makes zero difference whatsoever to the rendering of the page. –jacobolus (t) 14:02, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- GreenC is showing you examples of parameters which are set up wrong: eg, from the first result,
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200715225405/https://www.gameinformer.com/review/paper-mario-the-origami-king/paper-mario-the-origami-king-review-just-above-the-fold%7Curl-status%3Dlive%7D%7D
. The specific section of interest is%7Curl-status%3Dlive%7D%7D
which, because it was present and was folded (incorrectly) into the URL, breaks the archive link. Having unnecessary mark-up increases the chances that these kinds of breaking errors occur (viz "entropy"); but for|url-status=live
's prior inclusion this breaking error would not have happened. Ifly6 (talk) 14:11, 27 September 2023 (UTC)Having unnecessary mark-up increases the chances that these kinds of breaking errors occur (viz "entropy");
– This is an exceptionally weak argument for any kind of urgency in removing these. Wikipedia pages are not viruses with strong selective pressure against stray DNA. You should figure out who (or what tool) introduced this broken URL and if it is a common problem, figure out how to make them stop. Someone probably has a broken parser that interpreted a | character as part of the URL, but the URL would be just as broken if someone folded any other random following parameter into it, so this issue is extremely unlikely to have been caused by the presence of the url-status parameter. –jacobolus (t) 15:11, 27 September 2023 (UTC)- (For what it's worth, in my experience Citation Bot itself is responsible for most of the "entropy" in citation templates – for example the changes under discussion here – which are otherwise generally pretty calm places under ordinary human editing.) –jacobolus (t) 15:20, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- GreenC is showing you examples of parameters which are set up wrong: eg, from the first result,
- Having stray parameters around can contribute to errors like this and probably other forms of entropy. Cosmetic edits. Ok so we eliminate them quickly, or we do it slowly with other edits. My bot has been deleting them - with other edits - for 7 years, the quantity is huge. Where do they come from at this scale? Surely not misunderstandings by manual editors. I have not investigated but suspect VE. -- GreenC 05:20, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
AManWithNoPlan There is clearly significant doubt about whether this bot task is a violation of WP:COSMETICBOT, and you have provided no link to a bot task approval. Bot tasks require affirmative consensus, so the bot policy obligates you to roll back this change until you have acquired it. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 14:28, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- How is there even a prima facie case that such edits are cosmetic? The removal of this parameter changes
the output text or HTML in ways that make a difference to the audio or visual rendering of a page in web browsers
(WP:COSMETICBOT): the CS1 maintenance warning is no longer rendered.A substantive edit is one that does change the output HTML or readable text of a page
. WP:Bots/Dictionary. Fixing these errors removes tags such as these: <span class="cs1-maint citation-comment"><code class="cs1-code">{{<a href="/wiki/Template:Cite_news" title="Template:Cite news">cite news</a>}}</code>: CS1 maint: url-status (<a href="/wiki/Category:CS1_maint:_url-status" title="Category:CS1 maint: url-status">link</a>)</span>}}
- Such
span
elements are littered throughout the HTML on pages in this hidden maintenance category. Removing unnecessary|url-access=live
means they stop being generated. Ifly6 (talk) 14:41, 27 September 2023 (UTC)- @Ifly6, wait, are we showing URL maintenance tags to readers?! I'd assumed that those were only showing up for me because of some editor-focused setting I'd turned on, since the idea that there is any reason someone researching Foobar needs to know that there's an extraneous parameter in a citation is absurd. If that's true, then we have a deeper issue to deal with. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 14:49, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- These maintenance messages are not shown by default when logged out. The standard set in the dictionary is whether there is a change to output HTML and not whether a logged out reader would be able to see the maintenance message. Given that definition of substantive edit I don't see a prima facie case that fixing maintenance issues is cosmetic. Ifly6 (talk) 14:53, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- This change makes literally zero difference to the audio or visual rendering of the page. The page appears (or sounds) precisely identical with or without this parameter. [Arguably generating a "maintenance tag" for this is a bug which should be fixed, but that's a separate discussion]. –jacobolus (t) 15:05, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- That's just not what the standard (alternatively definition) is in the documentation. Ifly6 (talk) 15:13, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- You just partially quoted the standard. Here's a larger quote:
"Changes that are typically considered substantive affect something visible to readers and consumers of Wikipedia, such as the output text or HTML in ways that make a difference to the audio or visual rendering of a page in web browsers, screen readers, when printed, in PDFs, or when accessed through other forms of assistive technology"
. The change to add or remove url-status=live does not "make a difference to the audio or visual rendering of a page in web browsers &c." The page renders precisely the same either way. The only people who will see any difference whatsoever are the vanishingly small number of masochistic editors who have opted in to looking at "maintenance tags". –jacobolus (t) 15:17, 27 September 2023 (UTC)- The phrase
make a difference to the audio or visual rendering of a page in web browsers
is quoted in full in my original reply within {{tq}}. The use of disjunctiveor
can be ambiguous. That is why both the dictionary should be taken seriously as an interpretive direction and it should be read harmoniously therewith. Ifly6 (talk) 15:24, 27 September 2023 (UTC)- I honestly have no idea what you are talking about.
- Changing this parameter makes no difference to the visual rendering. It makes no difference to the audio rendering. It makes no difference to any other kind of rendering in any user agent ("browser") whatsoever because spans of this class are suppressed by the CSS on the page. –jacobolus (t) 16:10, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- It says "typically considered substantive" ie. visual rendering is a typical - not exclusive - example of what cosmetic means. Plus in this case it does affect the visual rendering for a sub-set of users, who opt-in for notification of citation errors. -- GreenC 17:54, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- This "subset of readers" is like 0.001% of Wikipedia readers, and they have explicitly opted into seeing such messages. It's not something that a bot needs to urgently fix, and could easily be held until there are substantive improvements to make at the same time, as the WP:COSMETICBOT page recommends. –jacobolus (t) 19:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- That's your opinion those editors don't matter. It's not a black and white instance of cosmetic. -- GreenC 21:52, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- You are putting words in my mouth. I said these editors are rare and explicitly opted in to seeing these messages (and will therefore inevitably see them scattered around on a substantial proportion of all pages). We might add that they can easily opt back out anytime they want. I never said they "don't matter". –jacobolus (t) 01:32, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- Well color me special because I'm one of those "rare" editors, I get so many warning messages from this problem I often ignore checking what the actual problem is, there is a high noise ratio. As a result many problems I might have fixed go unaddressed. Furthermore the type of users who have these warnings are experts and very involved in Wikipedia. The suggestion they could opt-out is pretty bad for the project and undermines why these warnings exist, to help improve things. Finally "0.001% of Wikipedia readers" is specious since most "readers" don't have watchlists, the reason for cosmetic. Again, this is not a clear cosmetic edit, like removing whitespace from infoboxes would be. -- GreenC 06:57, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- If you are bothered by these messages, yes you should opt out of them. They are not necessary for you (or anyone else) to look at, nor do they indicate anything that urgently (or frankly even eventually) needs to be fixed. Looking at them is causing you entirely unnecessary stress for no particular benefit. –jacobolus (t) 14:06, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- The same can be said for you and your watchlist. The bot says what it does in the edit summary, you can easily ignore it based on that. And if that's not enough you can opt-out entirely of seeing the bot on your watchlist (it might even be possible to opt-out based on edit summary content not sure). Or do so temporarily while the bot does it work on this issue (which lasted less than 24hrs). In any case, we have now established below that this notification appears for all users when in preview mode not only "rare" users. -- GreenC 16:28, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
- I check up on the bot because it regularly makes choices I disagree with in ways which concretely affect readers. –jacobolus (t) 16:31, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
- The same can be said for you and your watchlist. The bot says what it does in the edit summary, you can easily ignore it based on that. And if that's not enough you can opt-out entirely of seeing the bot on your watchlist (it might even be possible to opt-out based on edit summary content not sure). Or do so temporarily while the bot does it work on this issue (which lasted less than 24hrs). In any case, we have now established below that this notification appears for all users when in preview mode not only "rare" users. -- GreenC 16:28, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
- If you are bothered by these messages, yes you should opt out of them. They are not necessary for you (or anyone else) to look at, nor do they indicate anything that urgently (or frankly even eventually) needs to be fixed. Looking at them is causing you entirely unnecessary stress for no particular benefit. –jacobolus (t) 14:06, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- Well color me special because I'm one of those "rare" editors, I get so many warning messages from this problem I often ignore checking what the actual problem is, there is a high noise ratio. As a result many problems I might have fixed go unaddressed. Furthermore the type of users who have these warnings are experts and very involved in Wikipedia. The suggestion they could opt-out is pretty bad for the project and undermines why these warnings exist, to help improve things. Finally "0.001% of Wikipedia readers" is specious since most "readers" don't have watchlists, the reason for cosmetic. Again, this is not a clear cosmetic edit, like removing whitespace from infoboxes would be. -- GreenC 06:57, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- You are putting words in my mouth. I said these editors are rare and explicitly opted in to seeing these messages (and will therefore inevitably see them scattered around on a substantial proportion of all pages). We might add that they can easily opt back out anytime they want. I never said they "don't matter". –jacobolus (t) 01:32, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- That's your opinion those editors don't matter. It's not a black and white instance of cosmetic. -- GreenC 21:52, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- This "subset of readers" is like 0.001% of Wikipedia readers, and they have explicitly opted into seeing such messages. It's not something that a bot needs to urgently fix, and could easily be held until there are substantive improvements to make at the same time, as the WP:COSMETICBOT page recommends. –jacobolus (t) 19:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- It says "typically considered substantive" ie. visual rendering is a typical - not exclusive - example of what cosmetic means. Plus in this case it does affect the visual rendering for a sub-set of users, who opt-in for notification of citation errors. -- GreenC 17:54, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- The phrase
- You just partially quoted the standard. Here's a larger quote:
- That's just not what the standard (alternatively definition) is in the documentation. Ifly6 (talk) 15:13, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- (ec) If we're fixing what could otherwise be considered a cosmetic edit because it changes the output HTML, and the underlying parameters are not incorrect, then there should be no maintenance message because nothing needs to be maintained. The question I asked above was: where was it determined that this state of affairs should output a maintenance message? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:07, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- I would imagine the right people to contact on that matter would be the WP:CS1 developers. Ifly6 (talk) 15:17, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- The maintenance message was added as a result of discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 77 § url-status usurped.
- —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:52, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- You asserted there that "|url-status= is meaningless without |archive-url=", but that is from the perspective of a bot. This parameter is clearly still meaningful to (at least some) humans without archive-url. –jacobolus (t) 16:13, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- I did because it is. That editors assume otherwise is likely the fault of the documentation. If you know how to write better documentation, please do. The documentation for
|url-status=
is at Template:Citation Style documentation/url. - —Trappist the monk (talk) 17:08, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- My point is that deciding that the meaning of "url-status" must depend on "archive-url" is a completely arbitrary choice which was decided for bot convenience, is not a priori obvious to anyone just seeing the parameter names, and is clearly not how (at least some) human editors are actually using the feature in practice. It would be trivial to change the documentation to say that url-status can be added any time someone feels like it. –jacobolus (t) 19:12, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- That would also be my interpretation. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:18, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- Your conclusion that this was don for the benefit of a bot, and not people is a gross misinterpretation of the discussions. The discussion only mentions that a bot has been approved to delete
|url-status=live
without|archive-url=
, and that bot retired for other reason. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:19, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- Your conclusion that this was don for the benefit of a bot, and not people is a gross misinterpretation of the discussions. The discussion only mentions that a bot has been approved to delete
- That would also be my interpretation. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:18, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- My point is that deciding that the meaning of "url-status" must depend on "archive-url" is a completely arbitrary choice which was decided for bot convenience, is not a priori obvious to anyone just seeing the parameter names, and is clearly not how (at least some) human editors are actually using the feature in practice. It would be trivial to change the documentation to say that url-status can be added any time someone feels like it. –jacobolus (t) 19:12, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- I agree with jacobolus. Url status live is meaningful to human editors as seen by usage. A bot shouldn't remove it. Newystats (talk) 23:16, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- Why not use access-date as it is meant, for when the link was last checked, so people don't need to keep checking all the time, they know when it was last checked; or
{{dead link}}
which is a universal flag for all link types: bare, square and templated of any type, not only CS1|2. When the url-status system evolved, there was no intention to create a parallel system to compete or replace access-date and {dead link}. None of the 100s of tools and bots recognize url-status on its own as indicating the status of the URL. That a small number of editors use it off-label that way because they didn't read the documentation or understand how things are "designed" (evolved) is understandable but it shouldn't turn into a crusade to change the whole system which has far reaching consequences for lots of things. Plus your chosen method of using url-status for live has no date associated, it was live when, 20 years ago? You could also update access-date but that is redundant and prone to mismatch if people forget to do both, understandably since all the information required is in access-date. So at best you might say it's convenient to use it for double-duty, but that's really the only argument with some merit, and it has to be weighed against the downsides: people who do this might not understand what access-date is for, are not using access-date with all its advantages, or worse, not properly tagging with{{dead link}}
. -- GreenC 07:22, 28 September 2023 (UTC)- I'm not comfortable updating the
|access-date=
parameter just because I've verified a page is still live. I think for|access-date=
to be meaningful, it must be verified that the URL still supports the material cited to it. If the link content has changed, and the|access-date=
is updated just because it still serves a page that matches up with the other citation parameters, it's going to break verification, and confuse anyone who goes hunting for the right archive snapshot. Folly Mox (talk) 04:32, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
- I'm not comfortable updating the
- Also think (?) a lot of these are being added by Visual Editor, not by an intentional human. The sheer scale of it strongly suggests this, we've seen problems like this before. It needs to be investigated before assuming this is mostly being done by humans. -- GreenC 07:26, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- I use VE almost exclusively, so I can at least tell you that when one adds a citation it does not prepopulate that field. It's possible there are use cases in which VE will do that but I haven't seen it happen.I agree that this is an off-label use, but that's what happens to software (and CS1 is software): it evolves, and the users are part of that evolution. I don't want to exaggerate the importance of this bot run; it's only an annoyance, nothing more, as far as I'm concerned. But I do think that those behind these bot runs should get a bit more consensus before doing things like this. It's not just that the parameter definitions are not sacred; the other argument against this run is that it was cosmetic, and a lot of editors really dislike high volume cosmetic bot runs. I'll probably stop contributing to this conversation after this, but please consider that these objections might mean more prior discussion would be good. If you'd pointed to a bot approval discussion for this run specifically, that would have drawn the teeth of some of the complaints here. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:09, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- Why not use access-date as it is meant, for when the link was last checked, so people don't need to keep checking all the time, they know when it was last checked; or
- I did because it is. That editors assume otherwise is likely the fault of the documentation. If you know how to write better documentation, please do. The documentation for
- You asserted there that "|url-status= is meaningless without |archive-url=", but that is from the perspective of a bot. This parameter is clearly still meaningful to (at least some) humans without archive-url. –jacobolus (t) 16:13, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
- @Ifly6, wait, are we showing URL maintenance tags to readers?! I'd assumed that those were only showing up for me because of some editor-focused setting I'd turned on, since the idea that there is any reason someone researching Foobar needs to know that there's an extraneous parameter in a citation is absurd. If that's true, then we have a deeper issue to deal with. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 14:49, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
A point I didn't find in this discussion: unless I'm mistaken, when editing a page a preview will report that there are CS1 errors, without specifying the location; in particular, if url-status=live without archive-url is specified. So if an article contains a template with url-status=live without archive-url, a CS1 [corrected later] error warning is reported with the preview, by default without location or detail. (I am set up to display all CS1 warnings, so I see what is being flagged.)
Regarding access-date for a stable reference, it merely adds clutter for the reader viewing references. It is entirely pointless for readers (for whom Wikipedia exists), and also of very little use to editors in most cases. I find countless references lacking the publication date (prominently stated in the source referenced, and often highly relevant - was it yesterday or in 1980?), but proudly specifying when some editor happened to see that source. Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 14:04, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
[If] an article contains a template with url-status=live without archive-url, a CS1 error is reported with the preview
You are mistaken. CS1 maintenance messages are not error messages. CS1 does not do warning messages.- —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:22, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- Apologies, I mis-wrote (I know the difference), a warning. I have edited my earlier contribution to correct this. Specifically, after adding a ref with orphan url-status=live to an article as a not-logged-in user, the preview now displays "Script warning: One or more {{cite web}} templates have maintenance messages; messages may be hidden (help)". It does not specify which or how many of the references are at fault.[1]
- ^ Sensei, Brian (August 10, 2018). "If you preview this Talk article or section in
edit source
mode, you will get a green warning". Full Potential Martial Arts, San Diego.{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
- Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 15:01, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- @AManWithNoPlan, you have commented above, indicating that you have seen the concerns here, yet you have not indicated that you have rolled back the change. Bot tasks require affirmative consensus, not bold action and then hesitant discussion after objections are raised. Modifying Citation bot without going through the proper bot approval process and then continuing to retain the modification after objections have been raised here places you in violation of bot policy. Please confirm that you have rolled back the change until consensus for it is established, or we will have to escalate to an incident report at the bot noticeboard. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:23, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- As for approval, the bot is approved for minor 'tidy' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/DOI_bot_2 which covers small changes. Other bots already do this same task - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help_talk:Citation_Style_1/Archive_77#url-status_usurped Given the ratio of number of pages fixed to the number of people annoyed, this is probably one of the least contentious things that the bot does. This also makes it clear that counting on url-status=live is pointless. Most of the pages left in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:CS1_maint:_url-status are because people are setting url-status=dead instead of using the dead link template, all because of this misuse of a parameter. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:36, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- I also have no plans for any large scale runs AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:37, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
because people are setting url-status=dead instead of using the dead link template, all because of this misuse of a parameter
– "everyone keeps using this API contrary to documentation" is generally an indication that the API is broken (or at best poorly designed), not that the users are all just idiots.the bot is approved
– you linked to a "bot approval" from 15 years ago (!) that has nothing to do with the topic under discussion here. –jacobolus (t) 21:50, 28 September 2023 (UTC)- We struggled to find a suitable replacement for
|dead-url=
. At the bottom of Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 82 § url-status having a value "live" in the absence of an archive-url is a list of links to all of the discussions that document deprecation of|dead-url=
and our search for an appropriate replacement. If you have a better parameter name, don't keep it to yourself. Maybe, just maybe, we can deprecate|url-status=
and replace it with your better alternative. - —Trappist the monk (talk) 22:33, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- We struggled to find a suitable replacement for
- As for approval, the bot is approved for minor 'tidy' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/DOI_bot_2 which covers small changes. Other bots already do this same task - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help_talk:Citation_Style_1/Archive_77#url-status_usurped Given the ratio of number of pages fixed to the number of people annoyed, this is probably one of the least contentious things that the bot does. This also makes it clear that counting on url-status=live is pointless. Most of the pages left in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:CS1_maint:_url-status are because people are setting url-status=dead instead of using the dead link template, all because of this misuse of a parameter. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:36, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- @AManWithNoPlan, you have commented above, indicating that you have seen the concerns here, yet you have not indicated that you have rolled back the change. Bot tasks require affirmative consensus, not bold action and then hesitant discussion after objections are raised. Modifying Citation bot without going through the proper bot approval process and then continuing to retain the modification after objections have been raised here places you in violation of bot policy. Please confirm that you have rolled back the change until consensus for it is established, or we will have to escalate to an incident report at the bot noticeboard. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:23, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- Best wishes, Pol098 (talk) 15:01, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
- Additionally, this bot is changing cite web to cite document while removing the url-status parameter, as seen here, here, here, here, here and here. These are not productive edits, as it just creates additional cite errors, cite errors, cite errors, cite errors, cite errors, cite errors. And these are just a handful of bot errors I've seen this past week. Does the bot think Google Info and Photography are legitimate citations? In the majority of these instances, the proper remedy would have been just to remove these citations altogether, since they are invalid refs and/or unreliable sources to begin with, and tag it with citation needed. In another instance, the cite template should have been changed to cite AV media, instead of cite document. If the bot is just creating additional cite errors, then this particular task should be stopped. Isaidnoway (talk) 10:24, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
- The cite document conversion is done, since there is no url parameter set. It is hard to deal with such blatant GIGO, the bot tries to fix it as best it can. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:12, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
- I have updated the bot to deal with the changes to cite document. The url-status=live is disable for now, the converting url-status=dead to dead link is still enabled. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:10, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
- Dead to deadlink now disabled too. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:11, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
- I have updated the bot to deal with the changes to cite document. The url-status=live is disable for now, the converting url-status=dead to dead link is still enabled. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:10, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
- The cite document conversion is done, since there is no url parameter set. It is hard to deal with such blatant GIGO, the bot tries to fix it as best it can. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:12, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
- To talk about the parameter documentation: Help talk:Citation Style 1 § |url-status=
- —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:56, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
- Side note: If the {{dead link}} tagging resumes, please remember to include the date parameter in order to avoid unnecessarily having AnomieBOT come after all those edits. --Paul_012 (talk) 15:41, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
- If re-enabled, I will do that. 15:49, 29 September 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by AManWithNoPlan (talk • contribs)
- Not sure if there's been an update after this edit, but the formatting is incorrect. The parameter only takes the month and year, so it should have been
{{dead link|date=September 2023}}
rather than{{dead link|29 September 2023}}
. --Paul_012 (talk) 11:11, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
- Not sure if there's been an update after this edit, but the formatting is incorrect. The parameter only takes the month and year, so it should have been
- If re-enabled, I will do that. 15:49, 29 September 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by AManWithNoPlan (talk • contribs)
Trappist linked to this above, but I'll repeat the link as it's not just the documentation that is being discussed there, but the usage, as here: Help talk:Citation Style 1 § |url-status=. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:02, 30 September 2023 (UTC)