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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.

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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]

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]

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]

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]

AdsAbs limit quick exhaustion[edit]

Status
new suggestion on AdsAbs limit quick exhaustion
Reported by
Maxim Masiutin (talk) 07:33, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
There is AdsAbs limit quick exhaustion of current 25000 used by the bot. Can you please contact the AdsAbs persons asking to increase limit to 50 or 100 thousands. Alternatively, I can give you my API key so you can improve the bot to use next API key after previous one is exhausted, so that we will have a list of AdsAbs API keys to be sequentally used.
 
>Checking AdsAbs database
>AdsAbs search 25000/25000
!Need to retry after 15039s (04:10:39). Rate limit resets on 2024-05-07 08:26:22 UTC.
!Giving up on AdsAbs for a while.  Too many requests.
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


Citation bot needs to learn about the |article-number= parameter[edit]

Status
new bug
Reported by
97.102.205.224 (talk) 05:49, 13 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
The bot creates parameters like |page=182501 or |page=035005 for electronic journals (such as Physical Review Letters and Metrologia) which do not use page numbers. Or, to be more precise, each article has its pages numbered from 1. Those are |article-number= values, which are formatted differently. It is, indeed, sometimes useful to refer to page p of a long article number a.
Relevant diffs/links
Special:Diff/1223540435
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


Old edit I stumbled upon[edit]

Over here, Citation bot added s2cid, found it identical to the provided URL and promptly stripped out the URL. Now, that might make sense for a lot of citation templates, but this one was using a {{Cite web}} template, which promptly throws a CS1 error as a result of not having a URL.

Yes, in this case the reference should have been using {{Cite journal}} not {{Cite web}}. Still, I don't think taking a functioning if less-than-ideal reference and changing it into throwing CS1-errors without any substantial improvements is particularly helpful behavior. This might well have been fixed since (it was the better part of a year ago, after all, I just happened on it today), but if not, perhaps Citation bot might want to check when stripping URLs whether the reference it's stripping them from is using Cite web, especially in cases where all it's doing is moving functionally the same link to a differently-named parameter? AddWittyNameHere 17:56, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Use cite biorxiv[edit]

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]

Convert cite biorxiv to cite journal[edit]

If encountering a {{cite bioRxiv}} that is fully published, convert it to a {{cite journal}} For example

  • Wolf, Luise; Silander, Olin K.; Van Nimwegen, Erik J. (2014). "Expression noise facilitates the evolution of gene regulation". bioRxiv 10.1101/007237.

says "Now published in eLife doi: 10.7554/eLife.05856"

So TNT the citation

  • {{cite journal |biorxiv=10.1101/007237 |doi=10.7554/eLife.05856}}

and expand it

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 08:36, 20 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note to self. New DOI is in crossref. https://api.crossref.org/works/10.1101/007237 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:03, 22 June 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]

Even even more Reuters in title[edit]


This is when Citation bot changes from web.archive.org to reuters.com, it does not change the title in the same edit. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 19:07, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cannabis_in_Afghanistan&diff=prev&oldid=1230456141 where it did not remove Reuters from the title in the first edit - had to run the page again. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 20:18, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bot edit-warring with itself at Rafael Riqueni[edit]

Status
new bug
Reported by
:Jay8g [V•T•E] 20:43, 22 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
[2] - bot keeps adding and removing the title from a reference
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


I have fixed the reference. That is an odd case of bad existing data. I will look at how to make the bot not do this. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 00:22, 23 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Citation Bot edit-warring with OABot[edit]

Status
new bug
Reported by
:Jay8g [V•T•E] 07:12, 23 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
[3], [4], [5], [6]
What should happen
I'm not sure which bot is right, but they shouldn't reverse each other's edits.
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


OA-bot is wrong. Scholarpedia is clearly open access. Same for Medknow, ASBMB journals. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 08:36, 23 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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