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Note: See also how to prevent the bot from repeating mistakes. See also Help:CS1, and {{cite xxx}} documentation in general.

Note that the bot's maintainer and assistants (Thing 1 and Thing 2), can go weeks without logging in to Wikipedia. The code is open source and interested parties are invited to assist with the operation and extension of the bot. Before reporting a bug, please note: Addition of DUPLICATE_xxx= to citation templates by this bot is a feature. When there are two identical parameters in a citation template, the bot renames one to DUPLICATE_xxx=. The bot is pointing out the problem with the template. The solution is to choose one of the two parameters and remove the other one, or to convert it to an appropriate parameter. A 503 error means that the bot is overloaded and you should try again later – wait at least 15 minutes and then complain here.

Submit a Bug Report

Please click here to report an error.

Or, for a faster response from the maintainers, submit a pull request with appropriate code fix on GitHub, if you can write the needed code.

Feature requests

[edit]
  • Implement support to expand from https://doi.org/10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U192476 to {{Who's Who}}
    Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Friern_Hospital&diff=prev&oldid=1167644213
  • Implement support to convert cite web to {{BioRef}} and {{GBIF}}
  • Use https://www.crossref.org/blog/news-crossref-and-retraction-watch/
  • https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25497/ set NLM_APIKEY and NLM_EMAIL
  • journal/publisher that only differ by 'and' and '&' should be treated as identical https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Congenital_cartilaginous_rest_of_the_neck&diff=prev&oldid=1199200383
  • Free archive.org links such as curl -sH "Accept: application/json" "https://scholar.archive.org/search?q=doi:10.1080/14786449908621245" | jq -r .results[0].fulltext.access_url
  • Use GET instead of POST for better proxy caches when talking to data-bases when possible.
  • Start to convert Google Books URL to "new" format https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/m8W2AgAAQBAJ?gbpv=1&pg=PA379
  • When encountering a {{cite journal}} or {{citation}} with |journal=bioRxiv or |journal=bioRxiv: The Preprint Server for Biology [case insensitive], the bot should convert the citation to a proper {{cite bioRxiv}}, i.e.
    • {{cite journal |last1=Larivière |first1=Vincent |last2=Kiermer |first2=Véronique |last3=MacCallum |first3=Catriona J. |last4=McNutt |first4=Marcia |last5=Patterson |first5=Mark |last6=Pulverer |first6=Bernd |last7=Swaminathan |first7=Sowmya |last8=Taylor |first8=Stuart |last9=Curry |first9=Stephen |date=2016-07-05 |title=A simple proposal for the publication of journal citation distributions |journal=bioRxiv |page=062109 |url=http://biorxiv.org/lookup/doi/10.1101/062109 |language=en |doi=10.1101/062109 |hdl=1866/23301 |s2cid=64293941 |hdl-access=free}}
    • Larivière, Vincent; Kiermer, Véronique; MacCallum, Catriona J.; McNutt, Marcia; Patterson, Mark; Pulverer, Bernd; Swaminathan, Sowmya; Taylor, Stuart; Curry, Stephen (2016-07-05). "A simple proposal for the publication of journal citation distributions". bioRxiv: 062109. doi:10.1101/062109. hdl:1866/23301. S2CID 64293941.
    • The bot should keep |author/last/first/date/year/title/language=, convert |doi= to |biorxiv=, and throw the rest away.
    • {{cite bioRxiv |last1=Larivière |first1=Vincent |last2=Kiermer |first2=Véronique |last3=MacCallum |first3=Catriona J. |last4=McNutt |first4=Marcia |last5=Patterson |first5=Mark |last6=Pulverer |first6=Bernd |last7=Swaminathan |first7=Sowmya |last8=Taylor |first8=Stuart |last9=Curry |first9=Stephen |date=2016-07-05 |title=A simple proposal for the publication of journal citation distributions |language=en |biorxiv=10.1101/062109}}
    • Larivière, Vincent; Kiermer, Véronique; MacCallum, Catriona J.; McNutt, Marcia; Patterson, Mark; Pulverer, Bernd; Swaminathan, Sowmya; Taylor, Stuart; Curry, Stephen (2016-07-05). "A simple proposal for the publication of journal citation distributions". bioRxiv 10.1101/062109.
    • If it was from a {{citation}}, append |mode=cs2 to it.
    • To be extra safe, this should only be done when the DOI starts with 10.1101. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 08:20, 20 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Same for with |journal=medRxiv or |journal=medRxiv: The Preprint Server for Health Sciences [case insensitive] and convertions to {{cite medrxiv}}
  • If encountering a {{cite bioRxiv}} that is fully published, convert it to a {{cite journal}}

Changing every citation of a publisher's webpage to Cite book

[edit]

I have remained silent on this issue even though it has irritated me for a while now. And now that there is discussion above about the widespread useless cosmetic edits this bot continues to waste everyone's time with, I'll raise it: Why must every citation of a publisher's webpage be changed to to Cite book? I can only speak for myself, but every time I cite such book webpages I am not citing the book itself. I am specifically referencing the information published on the webpage. So of course I do not want the citation to be changed to Cite book with a bunch of parameters of the book itself (ISBN, date, etc) added. So I inevitably stop the bot or replace the reference with a third-party source. I realise the defense will be "It doesn't hurt" or that some users are actually citing the book. And I realise this is not the most pressing issue, but why must the bot come to its own conclusion of the editor's intent? I see another user complained of this issue last year. Οἶδα (talk) 22:25, 27 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This may be the kind of situation where it's safest to explicitly tell citation bot not to muck with the citation. It's hard to automatically judge whether the human editor actually wanted "cite web" or "cite book". (There are many examples of people using "cite web" to cite resources that should actually be books, journal articles, etc.) –jacobolus (t) 01:38, 28 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I understand. But it still feels like an another unnecessary task for this bot to insert itself into every article it can possibly find. For example, this edit is completely useless and actually corrupts my intention of the citation. Call me crazy but I don't want or need a bot telling me what I am citing (and actively altering my citations accordingly). Οἶδα (talk) 21:32, 13 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
When I've quoted publisher blurbs in the past, I usually set |type=publisher's blurb for clarity. In the specific case you've linked just above, another option would be not to cite the publisher's landing page at all, and add the book to a "Selected works" subsection or something. Indeed, the altered citation is sequential to another one, and so seems a bit superfluous. Or, alternatively, use "Citation bot bypass" somewhere in your citation as suggested by jacobolus above.
Given the overall lazy referencing culture of less experienced editors, it's likely that in the majority of cases, people who drop a link to a publisher landing page are probably trying to cite the book itself, so this behaviour of assuming that's the case is net beneficial. Folly Mox (talk) 22:13, 13 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I cannot personally maintain that the majority of users citing a publisher's webpage are lazily intending to cite the book itself. My experience suggests otherwise which is why I have taken issue, but I realise my editing purview might be skewed. However, if that is observably true then I will resign to accepting this as a forgivable externality. Οἶδα (talk) 06:35, 14 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In fairness to your point, I haven't looked into the data about how frequently this sort of change is appropriate; it could be the case that my own perspective is the skewed one. Folly Mox (talk) 08:32, 14 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I couldn't find a list of tasks that the bot has been approved for (other than the very first approval) nor a thorough description of all of its mystical activities. I was surprised to find it would change "Cite web" to "Cite book" (for unclear reasons). The only cure, if the bot is unchanged, seems to be the <!-- Citation bot bypass--> mechanism documented at User:Citation_bot#Stopping_the_bot_from_editing - R. S. Shaw (talk) 04:12, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

URL removed

[edit]
Status
new bug
Reported by
Mika1h (talk) 10:57, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
Bot replaces cite web with cite book, it removes the URL completely
What should happen
Nothing, the ref cited a Library Journal review that's listed on the Amazon site for the book, now it cites just the book, there's no link to click to see the review.
Relevant diffs/links
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shatnerverse&diff=prev&oldid=1254239468
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


Identical to § Changing every citation of a publisher's webpage to Cite book above. While the choice of formatting may be questioned (can't the Library Journal review be located somewhere less objectionable than Amazon?) the behaviour here is the same underlying misfeature of altering any webpage citation where a book's bibliographic information is presented, as if the citation was meant to be to content of the book rather than e.g. a publisher's blurb or library listing. I think there are more discussions of this in the talkpage archives here; I used to favour this feature, but I'm no longer so sure it's a net positive. Folly Mox (talk) 11:36, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Apart from User talk:Citation bot/Archive 32 § Web->Book: I don't think that it was right in this case... (May 2022) linked in the thread above, there was some conversation at User talk:Citation bot/Archive 39 § Introduces ref error when citing Penguin publisher website (May 2024). There could be others. I have to go to work. Folly Mox (talk) 13:01, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why is Citation Bot removing a page # from a cite's URL

[edit]

On Charles Clinton, Citation bot removes "?seq=9" from this URL. That bit of code give the Page # within the larger cite, so why does Citation bot remove it? It makes sense to me to leave that bit of code in there but the bot doesn't seem to think so. It's removed it twice, once here and once here, so maybe I'm wrong... Would appreciate some clarification. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 03:36, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also, if by some chance I am correct, is there any way to stop people from running the Bot needlessly on this supposed issue? Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 03:37, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The landing page is the same in either case. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:09, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It isn't the same for me... The one without the ?seq lands me on the main page, the URL with the ?seq=9" lands me on the exact page with the quoted text... Shearonink (talk) 04:55, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I also see the preview page showing page 9 of 17 with the ?seq parameter. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:06, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh good David Eppstein it isn't just me... The ?seq code might be taking us & other registered editors to the exact page because we have a JSTOR account through the WP Library I guess... But even if people don't have a JSTOR account the *code* should be left there, otherwise the URL seems useless. I like to give readers the option of going down the rabbithole of verifiability if they want to. Why is WP giving readers an URL that is to the entire book or article as the Citation bot default when the bot is run on the article? Shearonink (talk) 15:49, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Actually currently JSTOR thinks it is providing me access through UT Dallas, I guess because I was there for a conference last summer. But yes, this should be left in place, like the pg= parameter of Google Books links, for the same reason. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:27, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Headbomb 2409:4070:4381:EF12:0:0:1BF5:A5 (talk) 12:34, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Headbomb. I just undid the edit the bot had done at @Jay8g's request. RememberOrwell (talk) 06:04, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

CITEVAR and manually formatted references

[edit]

I asked this in the discussion of an earlier bug but it was archived without providing an answer. Can you please explain

  1. How is it not a violation of WP:CITEVAR for Citation bot to convert manually-formatted references into templates, as it is doing e.g. at Special:Diff/1216926071? A human might do this but a bot automatically doing it is completely something else, especially in cases such as here where it does not even improve the consistency of formatting (the article is still a mix of CS1, CS2, and manually-formatted references).
  2. For those of us who might deliberately format references manually because we don't want bots messing with our citations, or we made a deliberate decision that the citation templates were inadequate for some specific citation, do we now have to start explicitly locking the bots out of articles altogether?
  3. Where is this included in the BAG-approved tasks for this bot?
  4. I find the bot's edit summary "Changed bare reference" to be significantly misleading. This is not a bare-url reference. It is a well-formatted reference that happens to be manually formatted. Where is there any guideline or policy suggesting that such references are a problem that needs to be fixed?

—David Eppstein (talk) 20:29, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's already citation templates on that page. No CITEVAR violation happened. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:09, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I mix manually formatted citations and template-formatted citations on pages all the time, deliberately. I would be extremely annoyed if a bot took it upon itself to change that deliberate decision. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:17, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It should however, preserve the editors. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:11, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

STILL creating new CS1 errors

[edit]

Changing an incorrect cite journal to cite book [1]: Good (although would have been better as cite conference).

Creating a new CS1 error where there was none before, because it left the paper title in the book title parameter and did not change the journal parameter to a book title parameter: doubleplusungood.

Stop it.

Posting as a message rather than a new bug because this is not a new bug. It is an old bug that has been ignored far too long by the developers (see #Causing template errors, above). It needs to be fixed. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:07, 20 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's not creating error, it's flagging errors that were already there, but not reported. |journal=FM 2014: Formal Methods was wrong before. That the bot didn't manage to fix it doesn't make it a new error. Now the error is reported. This is an improvement, even though ideally the bot would be able to figure out and fix the error itself. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:11, 20 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
INCORRECT. It is creating an error, because formerly readers could see the paper title, see the book title (called a journal, but still formatted in italics the way readers would expect a book title to look), and see that it was a paper in a book with that title. After the edit, readers were presented only with the paper title, formatted as a book title, falsely telling them both in visible appearance and reference metadata that the reference was to an entire book-length work. It is not merely that it is creating CS1 errors, although that is bad enough. It is also making the reference less accurate in both its metadata and in its visible appearance. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:20, 20 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've gotten really exhausted with this category of error introduced by Citation bot, which I encounter every day I edit. I used to creep its contributions and clean up after it, but I've started just reverting its edits that cause this kind of template error, regardless of any value added, and only sometimes actually fix up the citations myself. Few of the editors who call Citation bot on large sets of pages ever check in after it to see if it's causing errors, so typically no one notices my reverts.
I saw a few weeks back that for one subset of conferences (IEEE maybe? or SPIE?) Citation bot has successfully been changing {{cite journal}} to {{cite book}} without introducing errors and growing the backlogs. So there has been a partial fix, but it's pretty frustrating that this known error has been perpetuated in thousands of edits spanning months.
Citation bot does not have an approved BRFA task to change citation template types, and changing to {{cite book}} has been the one that's particularly fraught and error-prone ever since support for the aliases of |periodical= was dropped from {{cite book}} a year ago. The easiest thing would be if support were readded, but that seems highly unlikely. I do think that eventually, if this bug isn't fixed, I'll end up asking BAG to ban Citation bot changing template type to {{cite book}}. Disabling the functionality would be an improvement over the current situation. Folly Mox (talk) 00:02, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Still ongoing failure to remove journal= from conversions to cite book, creating new CS1 errors and wasted time for human editors: Special:Diff/1245112056. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:53, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Adds cs1-formatted reference to article whose references are entirely in cs2

[edit]
Status
new bug
Reported by
—David Eppstein (talk) 21:20, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
In this edit the bot turned a bare-url reference, in an article all of whose many templated references were in Citation Style 2 (some using cite templates with mode=cs2), into a cite web template in Citation Style 1
What should happen
Not that. There is no reason to use cite web when the citation template works ok. In this case it could have been cite report if the bot were more intelligent, but that's above and beyond the bug in question
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


It should be enough to do a pass for new {{cite xxx}} being added in the edit if every other cite was {{citation}} (or {{cite xxx|mode=cs2}}. The exception should be that {{cite arxiv}}, {{cite bioRxiv}}, {{cite citeseerx}}, {{cite medrxiv}}, and {{cite ssrn}} all have |mode=cs2 added to them instead of being converted to {{citation}}.

Undoes DELIBERATE formatting of conference-proceedings-in-journal-special issue as cite journal, violating CITEVAR and reintroducing previously-fixed CS1 errors

[edit]
Status
new bug
Reported by
—David Eppstein (talk) 01:32, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
In Kenneth E. Iverson, one of the references is to a paper in the "Conference proceedings on APL as a tool of thought - APL '89", published in a special issue of APL Quote Quad, a periodical. It had a cite conference format but a journal= parameter, a CS1 error, which I fixed in Special:Diff/1238853961. It is not possible to simultaneously format it as a book and a periodical; I deliberately chose one, using cite journal to get most of the metadata correct and using department= to provide the remaining metadata, that this journal issue is a conference proceedings and the name of the proceedings. In the very next edit Special:Diff/1239895881, Citation bot under the control of User:Headbomb edit-warred to restore the citation to its unfixed CS1 error state as a cite book with erroneous journal parameter, but now with an extra erroneous department parameter. Incidentally, all of the major computer graphics conferences and many database conferences now publish their conference proceedings as special issues of journals (and have done so for years), and there are many older programming language conference proceedings published in ACM SIGPLAN Notices. This is something we must handle properly, not a weird one-off situation that we can handle by marking it as special. The situation that the citation templates do not make it easy or convenient to cite such things should not be exacerbated by the citation bot not understanding these things and lobotomizing the citations to fit its poor understanding.
What should happen
Not that
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


David Eppstein, {{Cite conference}} supports both book and journal parameters. That's what I use to cite conference proceedings published as special journal issues. Not sure why Citation bot doesn't. Would certainly be a quicker fix than publisher by publisher. Also, {{cite journal}} supports |isbn=, so I'm not sure why conference proceedings keep getting mistranslated into {{cite book}}s. Folly Mox (talk) 01:40, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's interesting that cite conference allows both conference= and journal=, and that would also be an acceptable way of formatting the citation, but it doesn't format the citation as a publication in a periodical the way cite journal does. (It spells out the volume and issue instead of using the abbreviated format of cite journal.) —David Eppstein (talk) 01:46, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice if {{citation}} supported something like a "conference" parameter. –jacobolus (t) 07:58, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

First, if you do something deliberately weird, then the 'solution', so to speak, is to follow User:Citation bot#Stopping the bot from editing (bullet #2), not block the bot on the entire article. Second, the issue here is that you're trying to have two citations in one. The first is from the doi:10.1145/75145.75170:

  • Hagamen, W.; Berry, P. C.; Iverson, K. E.; Weber, J. C. (1989). "Processing natural language syntactic and semantic mechanisms". ACM SIGAPL APL Quote Quad. 19 (4): 184–189. doi:10.1145/75145.75170.

The second is from the ISBN 0897913272/doi:10.1145/75144.75170 (note 10.1145/75144.75170 vs 10.1145/75145.75170):

  • Hagamen, W.; Berry, P. C.; Iverson, K. E.; Weber, J. C. (1989). "Processing natural language syntactic and semantic mechanisms". In Kertész, Ádám; Shaw, Lynne C. (eds.). APL '89 Conference Proceedings: APL as a tool of thought; New York City, August 7–10, 1989. New York, NY: ACM. pp. 184–189. ISBN 0897913272.

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:16, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you failed to read my message. Perhaps you are unaware how annoying it is to put time and effort into cleaning up problems only to have some editor-with-bot fuck up the article in exactly the same way again. But regardless, you are incorrect. They are not two publications. They are a single publication, of a paper in a conference proceedings in a journal. Conference proceedings get published in journals, all the time. Get over it and stop making work for others when you don't understand things. That goes for the bot, too. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:50, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Clearly these have been published both in a book (doi:10.1145/75144.75170) and in APL Quote Quad (doi:10.1145/75145.75170) and the core of the issue is that you've mixed the journal DOI with the book ISBN. These two should not be present in the same citation. That you insist that they are is the root cause of your issues.
I'll flip things back on you, because you clearly are unaware of how annoying it is to be accused of bad faith behaviour get reflexively reverted [2] without understanding what it is you reverted. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:26, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, now this is rising to the level of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. The original publication of the book was as an issue of APL Quote Quad. Perhaps you have never subscribed to an ACM SIG newsletter and sometimes received surprise conference proceedings in your mailbox when the conference published its proceedings as an issue of the newsletter. I have. It used to be a standard way to publish the proceedings of minor ACM conferences (the major ones got a separately published proceedings volume). Maybe they separated them later and decided to give them separate dois. Did not the fact that they had identical page numbers give you any second thoughts? Who would reprint a whole conference proceedings as a second, separate publication, and why? —David Eppstein (talk) 05:40, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
They have identical publication dates (1 July 1989) as well as page numbers, and both PDFs are marked with "APL QUOTE QUAD" in the page footers. XOR'easter (talk) 23:01, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Canceling deliberate bot exclusions, as in special:diff/1240206999, without consensus/discussion, seems way, way out of line. –jacobolus (t) 07:56, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

caps

[edit]
Status
new bug
Reported by
Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 19:56, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
|title=Phylogenetic Placement and Circumscription of Tribes Inuleae s. STR. And Plucheeae (Asteraceae): Evidence from Sequences of Chloroplast Gene NDHF
What should happen
|title=Phylogenetic Placement and Circumscription of Tribes Inuleae s. str. and Plucheeae (Asteraceae): Evidence from Sequences of Chloroplast Gene ndhF
Relevant diffs/links
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Plucheeae&diff=prev&oldid=1246081258
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


I think Citation bot is to aggressive in it's capitalization of every three-/four-letter combinations and words following a dot. Also on other references it many times incorrectly capitalizes words inside parentheses. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 19:56, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

specific issues fixed. some special code for parentheses does need added AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:30, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note to self. Look at UCFIRST_JOURNAL_ACRONYMS in expandFns.php. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:48, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unreal page numbers from PubMed

[edit]
Status
new bug
Reported by
Jc3s5h (talk) 04:27, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
numbers that are not page numbers are cited as page numbers
What should happen
The publication described on the "link showing what happens" line does not appear to use page numbers so no page number should be reported.
Relevant diffs/links
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Voter_identification_laws_in_the_United_States&diff=1248756987&oldid=1248584828#cite_note-h933-163
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


That's an article number and should be formatted using |article-number= instead of |pages=. See § Added page parameter when it should be article-number, above. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:43, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Added page parameter when it should be article-number, based upon CrossRef

[edit]
Status
new bug
Reported by
—David Eppstein (talk) 07:17, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
In an earlier version of quasicrystal, reference [42] Paßens et al (Nature Communications) had |pages=15367 (obviously incorrect). Using AWB, a week or so ago, User:Srich32977 made it worse by changing this to |📃=15367 causing an invalid parameter error. Then in Special:Diff/1246321827, Citation bot noticed the missing parameter and added |page=15367, better than before but still not correct. In this instance, 15367 is an article number, not a page number, so it should have been |article-number=15367. (Citation bot left Srich32977's garbage parameter in place but I do not think that is a bug.)
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


Thank you for this example. Unlike many of the other ones, this one actually has the article number as an article and not just a page in CrossRef. I now have an example to work with. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:20, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:COSMETICBOT

[edit]
Status
new bug
Reported by
—David Eppstein (talk) 21:43, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
In Special:Diff/1256146187 the only change is to alter a double-spaced period in a reference title to a single-spaced period, something that makes no difference in the final rendered appearance.
What should happen
Not that.
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


Removes page link

[edit]
Status
new bug
Reported by
Macrakis (talk) 20:39, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
Citation bot rewrites Google books link so that it no longer links directly to the appropriate page.
Relevant diffs/links
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Michel-Philippe_Bouvart&diff=prev&oldid=1255906763
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


This is a duplicate of the above. Are you sure that the search is not displayed on the same page, instead of a javascript overlay. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:45, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure what you mean by "search is not displayed on the same page". Using the link in the old version, namely [3], the quotation "dépêche-vous..." appears at the top of the Google Books page. But using the link in this version, as revised by Citation bot, namely [4], the overview page of the book is shown, not the page with the quote. Tested in Chrome 130.0.6723.117 (on x86_64 MacOS), Firefox 131.0.2, and Safari 18.1 (19619.2.8.111.5, 19619). --Macrakis (talk) 21:29, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please check in incognito mode. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:11, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the ida. I checked in incognito mode in Chrome. The edited link now does show the quotation, though in a different place on the page. The reason appears to be that in incognito, I'm using the default Google Books, while in logged-in mode, I'm using the new Google Books interface. Shouldn't Citation bot work with both the new and the old Google Books? --Macrakis (talk) 16:21, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The reality is the old google books is much more likely to work for people. The new format is dependent upon javascript while the old version is not. Google needs to figure this out. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:27, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]


For some reason this link doesn't open a page on Google Books, but this one does. Citation bot will change the latter to the former, and say it is anonymizing links. Any way we can get it to keep the bsq though? Andre🚐 10:16, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure what your issues are, but they work for me. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:13, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the first link, there's no page opened with the query. While the latter does. I tried in an incognito too and same thing. Andre🚐 19:43, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can confirm the reported behaviour here. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:35, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
[5] also works, but [6] doesn't. Removing the hl=en I suppose is anonymization, but can it just leave the bsq and the gbpv, and I guess it would have to also not shorten the URL as it does? [7] doesn't work either. Andre🚐 05:42, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The new google books url requires javascript to display anything and it dynamically generated. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:29, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

author/first --> last/first

[edit]
Status
new bug
Reported by
Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:21, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What should happen
[8]
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


Same for author2/first2 --> last2/first2. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:21, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

web vs book

[edit]
Status
new bug
Reported by
🌿MtBotany (talk) 02:07, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
The bot reformatted citations to a website that has ISBN and OCLC numbers due to being derived from a volume of a book series.
Relevant diffs/links
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penstemon_crandallii&oldid=1256314002
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


This is the same issue as § Changing every citation of a publisher's webpage to Cite book above (September 2023), User talk:Citation bot/Archive 39 § Causing template errors (November 2023), User talk:Citation bot/Archive 39 § A class of new(?) errors (November 2023), User talk:Citation bot/Archive 39 § Introduces ref error when citing Penguin publisher website (May 2024), etc. I believe most of the cases that cause template errors have been fixed this year, but the underlying behaviour has not. Maybe this exact class of parameters wasn't addressed because it includes both |website= and |page=.
TBH Citation bot is such a popular and high-volume tool that it might actually be worth holding a centralised discussion about whether this functionality is desired instead of having the same conversation here every few months. Folly Mox (talk) 14:14, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong parameter

[edit]
Status
new bug
Reported by
4TheWynne (talk • contribs) 03:54, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
Bot keeps changing parameter from 'publisher' to 'work' for Fox Sports sources when it shouldn't
Relevant diffs/links
Diff (one of many examples)
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


Hey there – just reaching out regarding something that's been annoying to deal with for a bit, and that's when the bot changes the 'publisher' paramater to 'work' for Fox Sports sources, even though it's treated the same as ABC News, Seven News, Nine's Wide World of Sports, ESPN, etc., all of which use 'publisher'; thanks. 4TheWynne (talk • contribs) 03:54, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it is the others that are wrong. Am I correct to believe that News International is the publisher of Fox Sports? So who is really the publisher of each of the other channels you mention? And who cares? That's why "work=" is the safer option. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:45, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bot gives webpages wrong date

[edit]
Status
new bug
Reported by
Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:23, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
The bot reads the date of an artwork in an online collection catalogue as the date of the webpage (wrongly, in this case!)
What should happen
Bot should realise that no website was published in 150 AD. Suggest a sanity check whereby the bot does not date something using {{cite web}} to before, say, 1990.
Relevant diffs/links
diff; webpage
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


Not quite sure where the bot is getting its date from, but my best guess is <div class="notice__date"> <span> -150 / -125 (3e quart IIe s. av. J.-C.) </span> </div> is being read as the date of the webpage. In addition to the fact that clearly no website was published in 150, if this is the case the bot is just taking the first number it finds in a date range which is also not ideal, and missing the fact that "-150" actually means 150 BC, not 150 AD. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:23, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I like that suggested sanity check. The pre-Internet {{Cite web}} |date= thing should probably also generate a maintenance message from Module:CS1. There will likely be tons of false positives due to using the wrong template type though. Folly Mox (talk) 13:55, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have added collections.louvre.fr to the list of websites that do not have dates. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:04, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Changing google books top-level domain; "Citation bot bypass" not helping

[edit]

Citation bot is still changing the google books top-level domain (TLD), such as books.google.it being changed to books.google.com. I thought this issue had been fixed since a 2020 report said it was; see User talk:Citation bot/Archive 20 § Google books top domain. I had tested it last month (and again today) on Estonian Native horse (non-CS1 format) with no changes made by Citation bot. However, I ran it today on Bashkir horse and it changed the TLD on the same citation URL (https://books.google.it/books?id=2UEJDAAAQBAJ&hl=en) but this time using CS1 format and including <!-- Citation bot bypass--> per the instructions.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 18:40, 20 November 2024 (UTC) It also did it here: [9].   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 18:42, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

this is not a bug. This has been discussed multiple times. Google book URLs should be .com, unless you have a very good reason otherwise. Also, you did the bypass wrong. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:19, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@AManWithNoPlan: That is good news (to me). I'm being stymied by someone who insists on using books.google.it then adding {{bots|deny=Citation bot}} in order to keep their preferred top-level domain. Despite multiple tries, they have refused to discuss it, insist I "first change consensus", and have been reverting my edits where I removed {{bots|deny=Citation bot}} and/or replaced it with a citation using <!-- Citation bot bypass--> (which I thought I had used correctly per the instructions, and cannot find the mistake you hint at). In March 2023 they complained on an Archive 34 thread where you also marked it "not a bug", but then they started to add the {{bots|deny=Citation bot}} to every single article they have edited where they added a google books link (and always to books.google.it). Though I don't care if they use books.google.it, I do care about them denying Citation bot for entire articles with no reasonable basis for doing so. I'm at a loss on how to proceed.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 23:53, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not seeing the syntax error in the citation bypass either: the html comment is between the template name and the pipe for the first parameter. It looks just like the documentation. What are we missing? Folly Mox (talk) 18:55, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@AManWithNoPlan: Hello???   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 22:02, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The documentation states that you put a comment next to the item you do not want changed. So, if you do not want the URL changed, then you put it next to the URL. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:44, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Does "next to" mean in front of the value, or after the value? Let me get this straight... you've suggested I should have used the inadequately-described option #3 from the documentation, while implying that the clearly-described option #2 which I used doesn't work? 2. To prevent Citation bot from editing a specific citation, add a comment to the citation template before the first |, such as {{cite journal <!-- Citation bot bypass--> |last=Smith |first=John |year=2018 |...}} Please change documentation for option #3 to include what one should do in the case of CB modifying a parameter with a value (currently it only describes how to use it when a parament value is absent and CB is adding an incorrect value). Also, please consider this my bug report for option#2 not working as described.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 17:48, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm hoping the option to skip the whole citation can be restored. It's a nice middle ground between "don't change this one specific value" and "never edit this article again". I use this rather frequently when I'm fixing a citation where Citation bot had previously introduced an error, often because it clearly didn't understand the first time round and I'm not sure exactly how it will damage my repair if it's run on the same article again. Folly Mox (talk) 18:53, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Or if I just don't want it to change the template type back to an erroneous one. Folly Mox (talk) 18:55, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging @Headbomb: to this thread.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 20:34, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I restored this thread from archive for the second time. @AManWithNoPlan: Please answer my question to clarify what you meant by "next to". @Headbomb: You reverted my edit to the documentation on the main page without attempting to clarify the issue. One of you two, or anyone else, please clarify how to correctly use option #3. Also, it is apparent that option #2 is broken.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 16:59, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your edit made things less clear. So it was reverted. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:00, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Headbomb: The documentation for option #3 only shows as an example how to put a comment in a blank parameter that Citation bot is incorrectly adding. AManWithNoPlan, above, alludes to my usage of option #2 as faulty and tells me I 'did it wrong', confusingly referring to option #3 and [ambiguously] stating I needed to put the comment "next to" the parameter. The documentation doesn't say where "next to" (before or after a parameter value?), nor has he answered my request to clarify what he meant. The original objective was to block Citation bot from altering a stated URL. I wanted Citation bot to bypass the citation entirely, but Citation bot continues to modify the URL despite my use of option #2. Now I know you think the documentation was already clear (it wasn't), and that my edit to remove "modify" to option #3 is less clear (I read your revert edit summary yesterday), however, reverting my edit doesn't contribute to clarifying what to do if a parameter value is specified that one wants to be untouched by Citation bot. My edit summary should have given you notice that for a reader, at least this one, the documentation was not clear... and it was an invitation for you to make it more clear (which you didn't do). All I want is for someone to fix option #2 or, failing that, someone to clarify how to use option #3. That shouldn't be so difficult.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 17:17, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The docs are updated. Not sure who/when they were changed to something wrong. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:00, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that clarifies why option #2 wasn't the correct choice for me to use. Thank you for updating option #2 documentation. Extrapolating from that, I might imagine for option #3 that I would put the parameter value after the comment? Example, |url = <!-- stop Citation bot changing the url--> http://books.google.it/gobbledegook
Like that?   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 18:25, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Headbomb for your documentation edit clarifying that the comment goes after the parameter value. I consider this issue now solved.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 19:15, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Now I'm curious, though: is there a way of telling citation bot to avoid a citation? The recent changes to the documentation provide ways of shutting it out from an entire article, from changing the template type, or from changing one parameter of a template, but nothing in between that would apply to the whole template. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:59, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good point. With the change of the documentation, seems we've lost an option. Folly Mox had pointed that out above, but it went over my head at the time.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 00:29, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That was never an option. The docs were wrong. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:47, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The documentation since 2018 made us think it was an option ("To prevent Citation bot from editing a specific citation"). Can we put in a request to add that functionality?   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 02:44, 24 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bot not/slow on processing pages again

[edit]

As the title says. The website isn't registering my submitted pages/categories or is slow on them. The last time this happened, it required a few reboots to fix (see section "Slow" in recent talk archive) so I assume another reboot is needed? Spinixster (trout me!) 13:49, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to have rebooted itself. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:20, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
 Fixed bug that was causing this. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:30, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another page that breaks Citation Bot

[edit]
Status
 Fixed
Reported by
:Jay8g [V•T•E] 00:05, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
Citation Bot ends up in an infinite loop on Draft:Ray's Disease, seemingly trying to convert work to journal and back again.


Existing-big-run blocking is malfunctioning

[edit]
Status
 Fixed - moved back to 50
Reported by
Whoop whoop pull up Bitching Betty 🏳️‍⚧️ Averted crashes 02:57, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
When attempting to run the bot on Category:Cynometra, it spat out a "Run blocked by your existing big run" error, even though this category contains only 28 pages, far below the 50-page cutoff beyond which attempted runs will be blocked by a preexisting 50-page-or-more run.
What should happen
The bot should've run on the inputted category without complaint.
Replication instructions
Try to start a run with a number of pages somewhere in the 30s-40s range while you already have a run with 50 or more pages in progress.
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


It is now 5. Might increase back up. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:50, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Citation bot for mk.wiki

[edit]

Hello Smith. I am a bureaucrat on mk.wiki and a fellow editor suggested that I should ask you whether the Wikipedia citation bot can be used for our wiki (i.e. whether mk.wiki can be included in the "Wiki to run on". We invariably use English parameters in all our citation templates and we are wondering if we can make use of this excellent tool, if our wiki is enabled for it. Thanks a lot! B. Jankuloski (talk) 11:30, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is now in the bot code, but someone with POWER needs to create the account and give it the bot flag. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:31, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Running Citation bot on MDWiki.org

[edit]

Wondering if you would be willing to run the citation bot on MDWiki.org? Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:50, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is now in the bot code, but someone with POWER needs to create the account and give it the bot flag. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:31, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Enable bot in ruwiki

[edit]

Hi! We completely migrated the CS1 module last year and now I want to run your bot in the wiki, is this possible? Iniquity (talk) 19:39, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And I would like to give this account a bot flag in ruwiki, but it is not registered there :( Iniquity (talk) 20:46, 23 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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