User talk:Citation bot/Archive 23

September 2020
Your recent editing history at Lost council election cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war; that means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war. See the bold, revert, discuss cycle for how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in you being blocked from editing&mdash;especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring&mdash;even if you do not violate the three-revert rule&mdash;should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:18, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Your recent editing history at Magnificat (Torri) shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war; that means that you are repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree. To resolve the content dispute, please do not revert or change the edits of others when you are reverted. Instead of reverting, please use the talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. The best practice at this stage is to discuss, not edit-war. See the bold, revert, discuss cycle for how this is done. If discussions reach an impasse, you can then post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection.

Being involved in an edit war can result in you being blocked from editing&mdash;especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring&mdash;even if you do not violate the three-revert rule&mdash;should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:23, 9 September 2020 (UTC)


 * I need to look at why that happened. That simply does not make sense.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:40, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I have requested a bot reboot (and it occurred) to stop any current runs to figure out what is wrong. New runs can start.   AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:06, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * fixed, and I am moving onto proxy removals for now. Which almost everyone likes. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:51, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Caps: MicrobiologyOpen
note to self-fix excensive adsabs too. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:27, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Google Books leads to the wrong page
I think I know where it comes from: I went to a certain page (Ophel) and searched for another topic (Maledomni), and copied into the citation the URL created by the search, which indeed leads to the only available page about the search word in the Google version of the book. Now I've replaced it with the URL of the actual page dealing with Maledomni, so in this case the problem is solved, but the general bug remains: if there's a QUESTION MARK after google.books/ and before "id", then the bot shouldn't remove everything that comes after the page number (and replace it with #v=onepage), because it's removing the most relevant part and taking it all to the wrong page. Cheers, Arminden (talk) 10:43, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * ugh. google violating their own documentation. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:27, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * this is fixed for now. google is revamping google books, so soon all these urls will soon no longer go to a specific word or page, but just the book landing page. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:02, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Where is that documentation/notice that these won't lead to a specific page? --Izno (talk) 12:29, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

For context, it's known that links to Google Books are not be relied upon: Google Books and Wikipedia. Editors who wish their references to be useful long-term need to use other targets for their links. Nemo 12:35, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The "new" google books experience deletes EVERYTHING after the pound sign from the URL. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:45, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The "old" google books experience almost always (but obviously no always) ignores everything (other than snippit and onepage) after the pound sign. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:48, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The only thing guaranteed to not change is the id= part, the rest is user/date/context specific. You say page=123, then some users will get page 123, others will get page 1, since they have used up their previews.  Others will be geographically in the wrong place to see page 123.  Google might instead give them 127, since that is close.  It is very unpredictable.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:56, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
 * One more thing, if Google adds more pages to the preview or removes them or changes their image to text methods, the search URL might suddenly point to different pages (or to no page at all). They are the worst. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:59, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Folks, let's cool it down a bit. There was a page number in the URL, and removing what followed after it meant that - that page number alone was left standing, and considering that, Google Books did nothing wrong. The code/bot needed to take this aspect into consideration and not to touch URLs where a question mark follows immediately after "id" and "pg". If Google Books will cut everyone from accessing the preview, as it happens from time to time with some specific titles, it's both their loss and ours, but maybe not the (c) holders'; so far we're getting more than anyone accustomed to German or EU copyright laws can even expect to be allowed to access. Btw, if you're cut off from certain pages because of the country you're in: try changing the URL ending, say, from .co.it to .co.uk or .com or whatever comes to mind; it usually works and one gets more, or different, preview pages. Cheers, Arminden (talk) 18:22, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Bot added ISBN to wrong book
Seems to be a rare database error. Added comment to prevent someone (or bot) from looking it up and adding wrong one. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:01, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Link goes to author disclosure, not paper
I have added that host to the list of publisher hosts. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:24, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * also reported mistake to open access database AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:28, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Still removing "duplicate" URL
The bot is still removing the url= parameter when it is a "duplicate" of an identifier, resulting in the delinking of titles in citations. Can someone please make it stop doing that so the whole bot doesn't need to be blocked again? We are past the point where anyone can claim there is community consensus for these edits; these are unauthorized bot edits. Thank you. Lev!vich 17:52, 10 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Can you please point to some examples that are not part of the bot's existing authorizations? AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:34, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Sure. Is the list of the existing authorizations on the user page complete/up-to-date? Lev!vich 18:45, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll assume the answer is yes. Here's an example from today: Special:Diff/978369371. I do not think this edit is authorized or has consensus. It de-links several citation titles by removing the url parameter (e.g. "The genome of an ancient Rouran individual ..." and "Historical Dictionary of Medieval China"), among other problems (e.g. changing the target of some URLs). Also, I'm not sure that all the removed URLs were duplicates (e.g. the one to Amazon Books). Overall, I just don't see any of the 9 approved tasks on Citation Bot's userpage as authorizing the changes made in this edit today. Lev!vich 16:53, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Those citations were not delinked, where a real link was provided: for instance, 10.1038/s41598-019-57378-8 is now linked to the PubMed Central version. The Wiley URLs were not open access and therefore should never have been in the url parameter per Citing sources; they remain accessible from the DOI link nevertheless. The edit also added a DOI which will later allow fellow bots to add free if appropriate, which is another way the bot helps having more links rather than less. Nemo 21:24, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I didn't say the citation was delinked, I said, which is exactly what that edit did. What part of WP:Citing sources are you referring to? Can you quote? Lev!vich 21:49, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Here are some more recent examples:   . I don't think any of these URL removals (which result in the titles being delinked in the citations) are authorized or have consensus. I noticed the $this->forget($url_type); line (which I suppose removes the url) in template.php at github was commented out prior to the bot being unblocked in August, but only for the s2cid identifier; the line was not commented out for the other identifiers (such as the ones in these examples). It seems pretty straightforward to comment out the corresponding line for the other identifiers and thus stop the bot from removing the url parameter. Lev!vich 05:26, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I have been keeping an eye on this page for some time. It seems to me that unless the operators of this bot agree immediately to remediate this issue the bot should be blocked indefinitely.  This is not the first time the bot has been operating outside its authorisation and apparently those in control of its programming are unable or unwilling to comply with the parameters of what has been authorized.  Time to stop. - Nick Thorne talk  09:53, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Those are all within the existing authorizations and RFPs and agreements. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:37, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately you do not seem to be interested in engaging with me in good faith about this dispute, so now at AN: Administrators%27 noticeboard Lev!vich 16:36, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually very busy in real life. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:30, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I've added a summary to the userpage, hope it's helpful. Back to the examples by Levivich: if you provided more specific mentions of the URLs you're concerned about, it would be easier to respond. For instance, in your second example, are you arguing that the URL https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17023652 should be in the URL parameter? If so, you'd want to change the guideline at Citing sources where it says and so on: we love PubMed, but it is just one choice among dozens to provide an abstract or a search engine result (unlike PubMed Central, which has the full text and has an auto-linking identifier parameter). Nemo 07:30, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Replaced these by official function overviews, also adding the same for those approvals which had no indication what they were about . --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:29, 19 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Citation Bot did this to Special:Diff/976668469. I was happy with the citation style I selected when I typed out that citation, so was dismayed to see the title of the work unlinked, making it inconsistent with the other citations. Worse, though, Citation Bot generated a red error. Can this error be investigated? Citation Bot shouldn't be generating citation errors. -M.Nelson (talk) 18:52, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

fixed

Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard - one discussion link below
Persuant to WP:BOTAPPEAL, I have opened a discussion at Bots/Noticeboard regarding this bot's continued approval. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 19:45, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

fixed - discussion seems to have closed. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:39, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Ongoing RfC - two discussion links below
The bot's edits include actions that are currently the subject of an RfC at WP:VPPR. Halfway through the runtime of that RfC it is impossible to say whether these actions such as removing links from titles will garner consensus to be allowed. What did you think: I'll run them now before they are possibly forbidden in a few weeks? Don't take us content editors for naive please. --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:56, 22 August 2020 (UTC) – ammended 05:57, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Please let's focus on the issues and not on people. Making up camps like "us content editors" vs. "them" doesn't help. Nemo 14:13, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You're right, ammended. --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:57, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.--Francis Schonken (talk) 05:57, 23 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Possible COVID-19 in the house 🤨🙁 so I might be a little slow (we have dealt with much worse infections before, but "it has been worse..." is never a good response, even when true). Prioritizing bug fixes over discussion right now. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:19, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

fixed - discussion seems to have closed. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:39, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Unnecessary changing from books.google.co.uk to books.google.com
.com redirects to people's local country. But local countries do not re-direct back to .com or anyone else's local country. That is why .com is preferred: everyone get's their local copy. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:07, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * That makes sense - thanks. Feel free to close this as no action required, or whatever needs doing. — O Still Small Voice of Clam 13:36, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Don't uppercase German adjectives
The bot has now twice changed the title of the journal Neue musikalische Presse in the article Johannes Brahms. German adjectives are in lower case and this is no exception according to the source: https://www.ripm.org/?page=JournalInfo&ABB=NMP. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:32, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Old discussion User_talk:Citation_bot/Archive_15. I had mentionned the -ische as a marker of German. That should be implemented if it wasn't (or is bugged). &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:23, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Same here, for French. Simply skip everything that has non-English language, they’re more likely to be false positives than true ones. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 23:31, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Message
Upon trying to 'Expand citations' on an article I eventually got a weird message,. What does it mean? Abductive (reasoning) 03:32, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Presumably that the tool was being updated to the latest version from its git repository. Seems fine now. Nemo 07:37, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * we block runs starting during a git update. We at least one time had the bot fire up with a partially updated version and the bot bascially looked like it attacked the page in question.   We are very carful since then.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:48, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

fixed with a better error message. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:16, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Caps: SCALACS
https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3580 Should be deployed soon. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:23, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Google books
Is there any reason, other than American pride, that URLs to google.co.uk are being all changed to google.com? Seems a bit petty to be honest. As examples see, and  which are all English subjects referred to by books published in England. It is just annoying when you get up to half a dozen entries per day in your watchlist which are pointless fiddling. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 13:13, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * See previous answer. The short of it is that Google.com is the canonical URL and will work for everyone. Google.co.uk will work for those in the UK (same for Google.de in Germany, Google.ca in Canada, Google.fr in France, etc...), and will often crap out outside of it. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:40, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * And also the new www.google.com/books wonder if it uses country TLD or is a universal URL.  --  Green  C  14:00, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It's not petty at all. The books.google.co.uk links sometimes do not work at all for me, while .com redirects to a cTLD which usually works for me. Nemo 14:01, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, then perhaps the edit summaries or somewhere should explain this, if only to keep my blood pressure under control! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 14:37, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * That's probably a good idea too; perhapds "internationalize"?. The bot operator and orignator of the code in question is an Englishman FYI. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:52, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * fixed improved the log messages. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:32, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Caps: Of, The, At
Something broke in the capitalization logic. Those shouldn't have been touched. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:08, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * That is super odd. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:51, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Also, for consistency in citation format, many FAs reduce all journal titles to sentence case. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  17:12, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Doubtful, since that goes against WP:TITLECAPS, and all known mainstream style guides. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:13, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Odd Www special code was wonky.  Should be all good now. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:23, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Caps: PalZ
https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3585 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:32, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Caps: AAPS PharmSci
https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3585 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:32, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Citation with ISSN
Not every publication with an ISSN is a journal. Certain series of books have an ISSN as well. Therefore a citation with an ISSN should not automatically be changed into a "cite journal".
 * https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3587 Once deployed, this should help a lot. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:39, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Capitalisation of postnominal abbreviations

 * The general matching logic seems to be (\w\.)+, or perhaps ([A-Z]\.)+ or ([a-z]\.)+. Although that would have missed "D.C.L" missing its final dot.&#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:42, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Bot changed deadlink= to titlelink=
https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3624 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:49, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Why fix isbn-10s to ISBN-13?
This is pointless. Why is this bot doing this? ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:40, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm losing patience with edits like this that just swap out ISBNs for no reason and remove the publisher of a source of information. The purpose of an edit summary is to explain what you are doing and why, not to write a string of irrelevant nonsense for a robot's benefit like "Alter: isbn. Removed parameters. | You can use this bot yourself. Report bugs here. | Suggested by Abductive | Category:MusicBrainz release group same as Wikidata | via #UCB_Category)". Stop this bot from doing edits like this. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:46, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Because the ISBN's are simply wrong. Books published in 2007 and later have 13 digit IBBNs and not ISBN10.  Wikipedia citation guidelines also say to use ISBN13 for newer books instead of the equivalent ISBN10 (if one exists, which is does not always).  People go to websites and find two numbers and type into wikipedia the wrong, but shorter number.  The wikipedia guidance suggests leaving 2006 and earlier ISBN10 alone, which the bot does (although they do all have a valid ISBN13 that was granted later). AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:04, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , Are you going to use intelligible edit summaries that link to these guidelines? Is your bot going to continue removing the publisher of citations? ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:11, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I am planning on improving the amazon publisher code. A piece of advice on amazon links like the ones in that article: they change continously, so archiving them (if possble) is a good idea.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:39, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Really the amazon publisher removal should probably apply to everything but cite web. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:15, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

No longer dropping URL leads to multiple ProQuest templates
https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3630 will fix that once deployed AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:13, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Edited active page
A change was made to the article I was preparing in MY sandpit and aginst the version history was the commentas follows: Alter: template type. Remove Template type redirect. | You can use this bot yourself. Report bugs here. | Suggested by AManWithNoPlan | via #UCB_toolbar undo Tag: Reverted)

Could someone please explain to me what this mean? What this a bot or was it another user (i.e. AManWithNoPlan)? Thank you. Blammy1 (talk) 15:54, 13 October 2020 (UTC)


 * That was me activating the bot. I thought I was only doing stale pages, but must have accidently done an active page.  I am sorry about that.  So, the bot did the edit, but at my request. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:56, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Change my method, so fixed for me

Dumb question
Does the bot check if it was the last editor of an article before doing any (duplicate) work? Especially calls to external databases? Abductive (reasoning) 18:11, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Not at this time. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:16, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Seems like it would improve performance. And don't some of the external databases have quotas and throttles? Abductive  (reasoning) 19:04, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Within each run, there is some caching of some data. But while simple to say, what you suggest is very difficult to actually do.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:19, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

notabug, but is listed on the GitHub issues page. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:04, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Request to routinely use multiple lines in citations
Citations of the form


 * first=A|last=B|title=C|journal=D|year=2000|volume=6|etc.

Should in my view be expanded routinely to separate lines:


 * first=A


 * last=B


 * title=C


 * journal=D


 * year=2000


 * volume=6


 * etc.

Reason: legibility by humans, makes human inspection much easier

Negative side effects: None. Files are not larger nor are they slower to process.

If anyone knows of an automated procedure doing the opposite (collapsing citations) please let me know so I can address that too. Thank you. deisenbe (talk) 09:46, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose, No, Please don't. I know this isn't an RfC, but Citation bot already gets enough complaints without it doing something (new) potentially contentious without consensus, and this request certainly qualify. I do not think most editors would welcome stretched-out vertical formats, as that is not what I usually see used in articles. It certainly wouldn't enhance legibilty by this human. Let's not do this. &mdash; JohnFromPinckney (talk) 10:03, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * while I would theoretically love change all citations to "look the same", what that "same" would be will never get an agreement. I would expect there to be 17 sides to the argument at least. Secondly, we have enough "creative" editors that things will go wrong. Thirdly, the ideal format will vary depending on article siza and if the cite is within another template.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:21, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This is a non-starter. Be aware that any changes make in this regard may be subject to WP:CITEVAR. As for supposed legibility, that is an opinion only, and I find the style much less legible on the level of a paragraph in which such a citation would be placed. If you are personally having issues reading citations like this, consider using the syntax highlighter available in 2010 and 2017 wikitext editors, Visual Editor, or one of the gadgets or scripts for such. See Syntax highlighting. Another alternative you might consider is list-defined references or shortened footnotes. --Izno (talk) 15:51, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

wont fix This is textbook WP:CONTEXTBOT/WP:CITEVAR issues. A WP:SCRIPT may fly (see WP:SCRIPTREQ), but the misuse of such a script would be a good way to get you banned/blocked. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:01, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Incorrect issue parameter
https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3623 Once deployed, should fix it. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:21, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Don't uppercase non-English titles
Same here, for French. Simply skip everything that has non-English language, they’re more likely to be false positives than true ones. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 23:31, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
 * language does not refer to the title of the work but to the content, so it is more than possible for English short works to show up in non-English works, and vice versa. --Izno (talk) 15:00, 25 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Old discussion User_talk:Citation_bot/Archive_15. I had mentionned d' as a marker of French. That should be implemented if it wasn't (or is bugged). Same for the others on the list, if they aren't all implemented. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:23, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it’s the language of the work, but in my experience non-English journals rarely have English titles (I see journals in whatever language with Latin titles every now and then, but otherwise the titles’ languages usually correspond to the content’s languages). In any case, not fixing an incorrect title (false negative) is a much smaller issue than incorrectly “fixing” a correct title (false positive). An automatic bot should only fix things it can confidently fix. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 20:42, 25 September 2020 (UTC)


 * I should note that that some editors enforce capitalization of titles on all languages since their style guide does not care what language the original text is from. This is even at one point mentioned as the preferred style for wikipedia when referencing "works" such as journals (the style guide no longer suggest that).  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:58, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * You are being argumentative but you are not addressing the problem. "Some editors" have nothing to do with the bot's settings being so loose that its mistakes are bad changes rather than merely failing to make some good changes. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:24, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Just rolled out some more enhancements. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:19, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Book vs book review
See the correction that I made here. The bot changed a citation of a book to a citation of a review of the book (the review was published in the journal Nature):
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=All_models_are_wrong&action=historysubmit&type=revision&diff=981335407&oldid=981225136
 * Comment: The buggy change from Citation bot is here. The publisher does not match. The author does not match (the citation template prior to change has author W. A. Shewhart; Nature lists the author of the review as R. A. F., probably Ronald Fisher). The publication year does not match (the citation template has 1939; the review was published in 1940). Only the title matches. That should be far too little of a match to trigger a bot edit. Many publications re-use the same title, even in the same year. It should never be the case that such tenuous evidence is used to associate citation template and doi/bibcode metadata. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:19, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I will track down how this is happening. We have quite a bit of special code for detecting this.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:23, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Surely the fix is not to add more special-case code to prevent this specific case, but to make the matching rules tighter in general so that a matching title with no other matching metadata will never get treated as a match. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:42, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Substantially tighter rules deployed. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:48, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

New link format?
These links no longer work
 * https://tools.wmflabs.org/citations/category.php?edit=toolbar&slow=1&cat=CS1%20maint%3A%20PMC%20format
 * https://tools.wmflabs.org/citations/category.php?edit=toolbar&slow=1&cat=CS1%20errors%3A%20DOI
 * https://citations.toolforge.org/citations/category.php?edit=Headbomb&slow=1&cat=CS1%20errors%3A%20DOI
 * https://citations.toolforge.org/citations/process_page.php?edit=Headbomb&slow=1&page=1968_Tampa_Spartans_football_team

What's the new format? &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:32, 2 October 2020 (UTC)


 * You have to use a webform. We require POST instead of GET now. Single pages are the only GET that we allow - since wikipedia links to those on pages in the left side banner.  One problem is that POST gets lost during initial authentication, but it tells you that in the error message.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:27, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This means that the category and page names are not part of the URL but passed via the HTTP headers. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:27, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
 * This will work for a single page : https://citations.toolforge.org/process_page.php?edit=Headbomb&slow=1&page=1968_Tampa_Spartans_football_team AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:30, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
 * So... does that mean there is no longer a way to run the bot from Category:CS1 maint: PMC format directly, either via script or via a link (The category can automatically be emptied by clicking here to activate User:Citation bot.)? &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:32, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
 * That is 100% correct. Only a single page can be run via a link now.  It was essential that we did it, but annoying.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:35, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
 * We could whitelist a few small categories. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:37, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
 * That would be nice. Category:CS1 maint: PMC format, and Category:CS1 errors: DOI being the two obvious ones.&#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:40, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I updated the links on the those to categories and this will allow them: https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3601 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:56, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Deployed and works. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:28, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

- report more like capitaliztions. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:13, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

CAPS: Protein Eng Des Sel
https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3602 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:41, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Caps: InfoWorld
https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3602 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:41, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Caps: International Journal of STD & AIDS
https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3602 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:41, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Bad meta-data
This will ignore that groups DOIs https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3614 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:40, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Suggestion
After completing a run on a category or other group of pages, the bot should include in its last edit summary a note that the run is complete. Abductive (reasoning) 21:33, 6 October 2020 (UTC)


 * That only works if there is something to do on the last page. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:41, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Still would be helpful. Abductive  (reasoning) 21:57, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
 * perhaps a (223/1000) type thing on pages that do get edited. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:28, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It would be really cool if it reported the number of pages edited/not edited too. Abductive  (reasoning) 16:29, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * See also this older discussion. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:41, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Alternate suggestion

 * Okay, how about a note at the first edit summary of a large run, saying "beginning run" and the number of pages in the request? If it has already checked and not edited pages prior to the first edit summary, it could also state how many didn't have to be edited up to that point. Abductive  (reasoning) 20:05, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3628 This will mostly do what you want. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 00:21, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
 * fixed pretty well. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:02, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Feature request
In this diff see  .. the  is a vertical bar that ideally would changed to  (unclear if this is the same as ). There are two other reserved characters for the title field:  and   - is this something CitationBot could convert? -- Green  C  02:24, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Why? has long recommended #124 for pipes in parameter values. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:56, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Hmm so it does. HTML markup in wikitext seems barbarian but I don't know the nuances. From the view of aesthetics, clarity, tracking and future changes. Given the option in an otherwise noncosmetic edit I would convert them (and reduces character count by 1!) --  Green  C  01:12, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
 * wontfix because it is not really clear what is better a magic work that makes &#93 ; or just plain old &#93 ;. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:34, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Bot linking a gay moods journal to Irish Greyhound Review book
The Bot is linking a journal to Irish Greyhound Review book for The 75 Years History of the Irish Greyhound Derby. I don't know why. Example of a page affected 1938 UK & Ireland Greyhound Racing Year. Many thanks Racingmanager (talk) 07:12, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * That's the correct journal for the ISSN that is in the reference. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:55, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * You should probably fix the ISSN on the 130 articles that you put the wrong one in. it is ISSN 0332-3536 not the one you put there. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:59, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I did about 30 of them https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&limit=500&offset=0&ns0=1&search=%22issn+0709-0609%22&advancedSearch-current=%7B%7D&searchToken=1h2o37fx98osahlr54wx263kr AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:00, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Irish Greyhound Review
Please note following my earlier bug report that I did not enter the wrong issn number on the 100+ articles that you indicated, I have the book in front of me and can confirm that the ISSN is 0709-0609. Looking on Google maybe a Canadian issn has been mixed up with an Irish issn but that does not change the fact that I entered the correct ISSN on all of the pages> Also I can't see anything on Google with an ISSN number of 0332-3536. Many thanks Racingmanager (talk) 17:24, 14 October 2020 (UTC)


 * https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/0709-0609
 * https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/0332-3536
 * The book having the wrong ISSN printed in it is unfortunate. Sounds like someone either messed up or had an interesting sense of humor.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:58, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * bar code makes it very clean which ISSN is correct https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fimages-na.ssl-images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FI%2FA1aXdcaZ5kL.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.co.uk%2FIrish-Greyhound-Review-Vol-2000%2Fdp%2FB001QJMFT8&tbnid=yKHFWaq6WfH_sM&vet=12ahUKEwjQ5NGo4rTsAhUHYawKHdAhDnsQMygGegUIARCvAQ..i&docid=-3sUYXlQpjAxeM&w=1632&h=2336&itg=1&q=Irish%20Greyhound%20Review%20front%20cover&ved=2ahUKEwjQ5NGo4rTsAhUHYawKHdAhDnsQMygGegUIARCvAQ AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:01, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The I in ISSN is "international", so there is no such thing as an Irish or Canadian ISSN. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:14, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

notabug

uses |encyclopedia= in non-encyclopedia templates
The bot didn't do that BTW, that was a manual edit of mine, but I did expect the bot to convert things correctly after me. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:37, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Yep, I erred.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 19:39, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3644 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:21, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Better handling of duplicates
When the duplicate are the same, just remove the duplicate, instead of marking it as a duplicate. To be clear here, the PMIDs weren't exactly the same (some had a stray /), but the DOIs were. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:39, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The DoiS did differ in capitaliztion, but those are case-insensitve. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:41, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Caps: Words before punctuation
Likely covers a lot of Las Something too. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:45, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually, " Los Vegas " has been on the special list for a long time. The word in question is "Los Vegas,". I need to think about how to deal with punctuation better. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:29, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Las Vegas, not Los Vegas. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:57, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * True "Lost Wages" or "Las Vegas", never "Los Vegas". AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:14, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Strip MR from mr
Same as stripping PMC from pmc essentially. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:48, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Also add a bypass for Category:CS1 maint: MR format to be run by link. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:50, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
 * https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3652 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:27, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Not sure this counts as a bug, but definitely a useful feature to have. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:35, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Title of article cut off after colon

 * This is a pretty unclear bug report, do you have a diff of the problem edit? Also, it's quite likely the issue lies with the database not including the part after the colon. That's very common. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:05, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

page link doesn't give a summary
https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3656 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:30, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Caps: The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science → The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
This is a common miscapitalization, and I need to manually clean it up every few weeks. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:34, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Are you sure?  https://journals.sagepub.com/loi/anna/ https://www.aapss.org/the-annals/ although https://www.jstor.org/journal/annaameracadpoli AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:10, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm sure yes. This is a relatively modern stylization we don't honour on Wikipedia, e.g. The Annals. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:21, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3658 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:03, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Agency
Excerpt from the documentation:

agency: The news agency (wire service) that provided the content; examples: Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse. Do not use for sources published on the agency's own website; e.g. apnews.com or reuters.com; instead, use work or publisher. May be wikilinked if relevant.
 * Should be publisher, not work, in those cases. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:39, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3658 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:04, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Why? The doc states:
 * Do not use the publisher parameter for the name of a work (e.g. a website, book, encyclopedia, newspaper, magazine, journal, etc.).
 * --Whywhenwhohow (talk) 22:17, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Because Reuters isn't the name of the work or website. Reuters.com would be the website/work, but not Reuters. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:30, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * We do not include the ".com" in such cases (c.f. you never see The New York Times.com). Reuters is the expected value, as in work and equivalent, when it is directly cited (rather than as an agency). --Izno (talk) 02:53, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Concur; Reuters.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 11:38, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Work/publisher bug

 * BBC should be BBC News Online --Whywhenwhohow (talk) 02:54, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Or at least BBC News. This adjustment seems reasonable. The original report is not. --Izno (talk) 02:56, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Yep, BBC News because http://news.bbc.co.uk/...; omit publisher because BBC and BBC News are substantially the same.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 11:42, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Agency redux
The bug fix for Agency discussed at User_talk:Citation_bot/Archive_23 prevents the bot from changing work to agency but doesn't fix it when agency should be changed to work (for example, due to previous runs of the bot).
 * Thanks. Shouldn't the bot fix any of those that it finds automatically when it runs? --Whywhenwhohow (talk) 19:13, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It will. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:51, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Wrong ISBN
Do you have a diff? This is likely a database/metadata issue. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:26, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Convenience links for maintainers ISBN 9789811057625 vs ISBN 9780674984424. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:27, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Ash-Gaar put the wrong google book in. This is not a bot but, but Ash-Gaar's mistake.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:05, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh no! My apologies! Sorry to have caused trouble. Thanks for your help! --Ash-Gaar (talk) 19:37, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Bot mistake

 * The citation was ok before. The bot tried to turn a wikilinked lccn in the id parameter into an lccn parameter, but got confused, turned the closing brackets of the wikilink into a url-encoded part of the lccn, and left the opening half of the wikilink where it was, breaking the template. So this is definitely a bug. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:13, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * That's an odd citation indeed, but valid. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:27, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * That pattern appears nowhere else on the pedia (special:search). --Izno (talk) 16:21, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3661 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:09, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Adds book author as author of unsigned book review

 * Two more on Virginia A. Clark. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:13, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * CrossRef has bad data. Evan a human looking this up would incorrectly add them.  Will look at if blacklist of bad data is way to go. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:19, 2 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I am adding code to avoid CrossRef for JSTOR doi's. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:25, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Fails to expand ONDB dois

 * Manually expand the url to a citation, and then we will. We stay away from 10.1093 URLs.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:52, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Citation bot fails to manually run on talk pages
Not sure what your problem is with the Bot, it work for me. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ADomain_coloring&type=revision&diff=986942210&oldid=986942172 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:59, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The cite arxiv is a case of GIGO. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:59, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The page name is "Talk:Domain coloring", not "Talk%3ADomain coloring". The bot expects the real name, not an escaped name.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:12, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm aware that the name shouldn't be escaped. The "Click here to jump the queue" link generated by cite arXiv (http://citations.toolforge.org/process_page.php?page=Talk:Domain_coloring) gives me the escaped name even though there isn't any URL encoding.  It might be a Firefox thing (or, less likely, an HTTPS everywhere thing).  Entering the page name on https://citations.toolforge.org/ (with commit edits and thorough mode checked) does appear to have worked (though the first time I tried it, I got a CSRF error, and the page's title is still  ).  That might be a GET vs POST thing.  Also odd is that this time, it set year=2020, but last time it gave year=2002 (but that's probably just a result of the previous GIGO). --Pokechu22 (talk) 22:23, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * fixed the cite arXiv AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:52, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Fails to run on Ionic bonding
It's actually the pp that stops it. Rare to see that on a semi-protected page. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:51, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The message should be updated then. Should also not get blocked on a semi-protected page too, the bot should get the protection status from an API query, not the presence of template.&#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:28, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3663 switching to API soon. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:14, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Better handling of garbage &.... in jstor URLs
Achieved after stripping  and   from the URL. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:47, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3664 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:20, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Double edit
I will investigate if this is a bug or just random database failures. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:00, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Suggestion re exclusion list for potentially common inappropriate changes
First, many thanks to everyone who works on these bots. I don't really consider a few anecdotal inappropriate changes to be bugs but I do have a question. I’m not familiar with what’s under the hood, but would it be plausible to maintain a list of specific parameter+value pairs for bot exclusion to avoid what might become common yet sub-optimal corrections? For example, in this case, I noticed the bot just made a few changes on Al Gore: a cite news was switched from agency=Reuters to work=Reuters and another from publisher=BBC News to work=BBC News. (I don't see that agency is even available for cite news but I presume publisher is more appropriate for both.) Since major news organizations such as these are probably frequently cited, it might be beneficial to not have them all changed to work. A list of parm+value specific exclusions would essentially be a whitelist, used to prevent bot edits. Presumably, there would be a proposed vs vetted list. I apologize in advance if this has already been discussed and archived long ago; it’s been 15 years since I was deep into regex/parsers but it’s hard to not think of possible tweaks. Zatsugaku (talk) 17:47, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Both edits were correct. agency applies when a newspaper or other source 'reprints' a story that it got from a news agency.  When the source is the agency as is the case at Al Gore, the agency is the work.  agency is a valid  parameter; see template doc.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:00, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
 * No, the agency is not the work in those cases, it's the publisher. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:03, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Changing agency to work is an improvement, but perhaps publisher is better. But, notabug, since it is an improvement and publisher vs work seems to be somewhat debated. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:18, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Heart
How can the bot add a s2cid to the article Heart after it added a s2cid a few days before, and with only OAbot editing in the interim? None of the refs were the same. Abductive (reasoning) 01:59, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The bot only adds links that are licensed. Oabot adds any links.  but once the pdf link is added then we will add the s2id.  Just like we do with citeseerx.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 02:57, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
 * But none of the citations were the same. Abductive  (reasoning) 05:48, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
 * What do you mean? OABot adds a S2 PDF link, then the Citation Bot adds the matching S2CID for that PDF.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:02, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I see now, there is a ref named  and a ref named  .  Abductive  (reasoning) 21:32, 5 November 2020 (UTC)
 * fixed the terrible naming https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Heart&type=revision&diff=987257340&oldid=987123512 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:14, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

CAPS: JMIR
Covers many journals in the JMIR series WP:JCW/Publisher10 &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:31, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

not supported |local= replaced with invalid |nocat=
cs1|2 does not have a parameter named Campinas. Presumably this is intended to be location. It is certainly not nocat which should probably never be used in mainspace (it is also on the short list to be deprecated and removed because we have a better parameter name: no-tracking).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:00, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

farsi
does this bot work in farsi.wikipedia or is there another or similiar or better bot?Baratiiman (talk) 13:23, 9 November 2020 (UTC)


 * no. for wikis that use the exact same citation templates one can copy the text to a sandbox and run the bot on that. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:07, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * it's gonna take forever like that plus it doesnt use same citation template as english wikipedia im not sure .Baratiiman (talk) 15:27, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Sadly, a wontfix problem.   The CS1/CS2 templates are weaved deeply into the bot. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:35, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Caps: EPJ
Affects a bunch of EPJ journals. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:09, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
 * https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3673 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:30, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

A journal spelling to watch out for
This has nothing to do with bugs in Citation bot, but I noticed today that the metadata in the doi database for publications in IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity consistently misspells it Appiled. There haven't been many copies of these errors that have propagated to Wikipedia but I found one in Superconducting magnetic energy storage. So if citation bot gets any data from this source, it might want to check for this misspelling. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:57, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
 * In my experience, those tend to be one offs in the Crossref database. But it's a good idea to check if it's widespread. It doesn't seem to be though (JCW/I6 and search for "IEEE Transactions on Appiled Superconductivity") &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 08:15, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I looked up several papers from 2001–2006 in that journal and they were all spelled that way. Google Scholar finds 165 hits for that misspelling. So I don't think it's a one-off. But as you say there are few copies of this on Wikipedia (only the one before I fixed it along with several unrelated "appiles" misspellings). —David Eppstein (talk) 08:36, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
 * https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3673 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:30, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

fixed

parameter naming
At WP:BRFA I have proposed a cosmetic bot task that replaces to-be-deprecated all-run-together parameter name forms with their canonical hyphenated name forms. In discussion at the BRFA, an editor has suggested that the task should not be approved until all tools that use the all-run-together parameter name forms have been updated to use hyphenated parameter name forms. I have spent some time trolling through Citation bot's recent edits and have found no indication that all-run-together parameter names are used but neither did I find any cases of hyphenated parameter name use. When adding new parameters to a cs1|2 citation and when given a choice between hyphenated and all-run-together, which does Citation bot choose? If the all-run-together form, can that be changed to the hyphenated form?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:57, 16 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I found two cases. They are now fixed.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:14, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:24, 16 November 2020 (UTC)


 * fixed

does not also rename |url= when renaming |title=
As an aside, for entry and entry-url are likely better choices than chapter and chapter-url:

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:52, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Outage/slow loading of form
I've also been having this same exact problem lately! --Woko Sapien (talk) 13:35, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Rebooted. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:17, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * , that worked for a while. Now it seems to have trouble again. --Woko Sapien (talk) 18:08, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I found a page that crashed the bot with a memory error. It should not have done that.  I think I have found the PHP memory leak - or a least a way to find it and fix it. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:28, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Still seems to be having trouble. Though that might just be me. --Woko Sapien (talk) 19:39, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Memory leak fix deployed. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:15, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Working on some more PHP leaks now. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:58, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Hammered out more PHP issues. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:35, 16 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Still working on it. I have two issues related to the lighttd fastcgi server.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:00, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Turns out a bunch of options I was controlling actually do not work right on the server. I think I have it better now. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:19, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Just had the same problem this morning despite reloads and varying the option entered. Timrollpickering (talk) 09:22, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, getting onto the homepage is fine. But it isn't processing pages.--Woko Sapien (talk) 14:35, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Not sure if this is relevant, but I've noticed lately that the URL is either slow or non-functioning in the mornings (EST), but seems to work much better in the evenings. --Woko Sapien (talk) 13:58, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
 * we are also on a shared hosting platform, so we do not get a consistent CPU supply like one would on actual dedicated hardware. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:09, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure how to tell whether the tool is consuming all its CPU, but from wikitech:Help:Toolforge/Web it seems an easy gain might be to specify "--cpu=1" instead of the default 0.5 when starting the webservice. Running the tool across more "pods" is one way to get more CPU time. Nemo 08:18, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Some statistics are available on grafana (from prometheus for kubernetes): https://grafana-labs.wikimedia.org/d/toolforge-k8s-namespace-resources/kubernetes-namespace-resources?orgId=1&refresh=5m&var-namespace=tool-citations Nemo 08:39, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Would changing the .lighttpd.conf help. Right now it is max-proc 2 and with 2 threads each.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:14, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I see nothing in the statistics that I think is useful to me. That does not mean there is nothing useful, just that I do not see it.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:39, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
 * increased in the template file. Some other significant tweaks to the source code and how it interacts with users. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:36, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Consistently getting "502 Bad Gateway" now on all modes of activating the bot. Abductive (reasoning) 21:29, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Significant improvements made, but still under heavy load. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:25, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Bot changes to alternate name of same parameter in Cite journal

 * It only does that when last2/first2 are used. It's cosmetic, so shouldn't be done on its own, but it's a good change when it's done. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:38, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The bot does cosmetic and non-cosmetic edits at the same time. Cosmetic edits are for the editors benefit while non-cosmetic are for the readers and editors benefit.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:32, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

The  template documentation has several examples (and empty copyable implementation proposals for the template) using last/first, at least one even in combination with last2/first2. I don't think the bot should "correct" what is acceptable for the template documentation. An easy way forward would seem to update the template documentation, so that only "canonical" forms of the parameter names are shown in the examples. I don't think it is up to the bot to force an update to the template documentation by edits that seem mind-boggling to editors such as the OP of this section. If bot-edit-initiators want to continue these edits, I suggest they follow due process for a template documentation update first (if nobody protests a WP:BOLD edit to that documentation may suffice). Sorry if, in the end, that gives the bot less to do, while editors will more likely follow streamlined documentation examples from then on. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:51, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * cs1|2 does not define one or the other of last and last1 as canonical, even in the presence of last2. last and last1 are, and always have been, equal aliases.  In days of old when cs1|2 used  there was a hierarchy when choosing from among simultaneous use of the various parameters for the meta-parameter Surname1:
 * Surname1=
 * Module:Citation/CS1 maintains a similar hierarchy for simultaneous use of more than one parameter from an alias group:
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:09, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * ... in which case it is maybe best the template documentation stays like it is (showing a wide variety of acceptable uses), and the bot not worrying editors with its "alternative ruleset" that rather complicates than simplifies, makes editors feel like they did something wrong where they didn't, and is really so far remote of the core business of Wikipedia that no bot should invest its energies in it. Tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:29, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It's not a matter of canonical or not, it's a matter of consistent parameter style within the same citation. If you have last3 in a citation, then you would naturally seek last2 and last1 within the same citation. Those changes makes reviewing citations that much easier. No different than normalizing editor-last to editor1-last when you have editor2-last present. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:36, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree, adding the enumerator 1 when higher numbers are present as well in a citation will improve consistency and ease maintenance for editors, thus is desirable. However, as this is a cosmetic edit, a bot should carry it out only in conjunction with a non-cosmetic edit.
 * By the same logic, however, a bot should also change last/first/given/surname (with or without enumerator) to the corresponding author-last/author-first/author-given/author-surname parameter if,  ,   or   parameters with  / / / / /  postfixes are also present in a citation...
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 18:36, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * It should do no such thing. last/first are clearly referring to authors, and adding 7 to 14 bites of text per author, amounting to several thousand bites of clutter serves no purpose. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:20, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I wonder why we use human-readable names at all... 1 to 999 would be so much shorter... ;->
 * Truth is, we regulars are used to them, that's all. last/first are nicely short and it is good that we have them as typing shorthands while editing.
 * But if you view them from a professional distance, these parameter names are almost completely meaningless. They not even refer to names at all. They refer to authors only because we defined them this way and the documentation states so. There is nothing "logical" or "obvious" or "self-explanatory" about them. For a newbie, it is much easier to memorize that we have parameters like author-last and editor-last (although even these parameter names are far from perfect) than last and editor-last.
 * Pages are stored in compressed form in the database and are likely transferred in compressed form across the network, anyway, so the effective difference is much less than your suggested ca. 10 bytes. Even in extreme examples the difference in the totally expanded page size a browser will see is minimal by today standards for browsers and operating systems. Therefore, as the parameter length is not really an issue storage-wise, the parameter name expansion is something that should be generally considered (although perhaps not in this thread) as a bot task to improve consistency and documentation for people who read citations on source code level.
 * (On the other hand, (only) for manual input purposes by advanced editors like us, I would even propose a number of one-letter parameter shorthands for the most frequently used parameters, like l (author-last), f (author-first), t (title), d (date), w (work), b (publisher), v (volume), i (issue), e (edition), p (pages), u (url), etc., but they would have to be reliably picked up and expanded by bots within a couple of hours for this to be useful.)
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 22:52, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 22:52, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

chapter DOI expansion to incorrect book title
https://search.crossref.org/?from_ui=&q=10.1007%2F978-3-319-28085-1_677 weird. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 02:38, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Correct ISBN10 to ISBN13?
Changing a IDBSN10 to an ISBN13 is does not need to be "Correct"ed though it could be "Convert"ed. An ISBN10 is perfectly valid I will often use when printed in a book and an ISBN13 is not given. Please sort out the derogatory summary. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 06:32, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Changed to "upgraded". This is only done for books with dates post-ISBN13 rollout and not older books, so generally speaking for newer books, the ISBN10 should not be used, even if printed in the book. fixed AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:52, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

first1=United | last1=States; first1= Great | last1=Britain etc
I don't know if anything can be done about this but maybe there should be an exception list for obvious errors like these, where the authorship of a book has been parsed incorrectly [caused by a cataloguing error at Google Books?], leading to a silly result. The case where it arose can be seen at  (my reversions), if anyone wants details. The sources are scanned C18 and C19 books so not compliant with modern standards. Disgraceful! ;-^ --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:49, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

fixed. Blacklisted the bad authors. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:46, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Apostrophes
Hi, Citation bot. I've just come across this edit. While it is, in principle, correct to replace a backtick with an apostrophe, in this case it is precisely the backtick that was used in the source. I don't have an opinion here, but I'm wondering, how far should we go in normalising source titles? – Uanfala (talk) 20:40, 26 November 2020 (UTC)


 * That is what the Manual of Style says to do. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:07, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
 * the exact phrase is "not a facsimile" notabug AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:06, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Caused syntax error while removing entries that have aliases
In ciation of "title=Left Handed Incandescent Light Bulbs?", Citation bot attempted to clean up empty entries ie. "last=" etc., but killed along the "last1=Eisenbraun", causing a template error. It would be better if Citation bot can detect whether it made any syntax errors, and roll-back if it did.

A book from the future
For the citation: title=Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880; isbn=978-1-4214-4003-3; publisher=JHU Press google books stated puclishing date of "30 March 2021" which is slightly out of reality. (Yes some publishers intentionally do that) So I left the date entries empty, but Citation bot inserted "date=30 March 2021". Google Books contains a lot of wrong data, please do not automatically bring them.


 * fixed with future years being rejected. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:17, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Unhelpful changes
This edit has been reverted. The names of some titles should be italicized and others not. This change made titles which should not be italicized into italicized versions, and that was not an improvement. Maybe a different parameter could be used, but this wasn't the right one. -- Valjean (talk) 15:59, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I see no issues with any of those changes. BBC News is a work, as is the AP when it is AP.com being cited. --Izno (talk) 16:06, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The bot was correct. BBC News is the work of British Broadcasting Corporation, the publisher as The New York Times is the work of The New York Times Company, the publisher.  agency is appropriate when an agency's work is reprinted in another source (typically a newspaper).  When citing the agency's work directly, work gets the name of the agency.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:13, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * notabug
 * notabug

OAuth doesn't pop up
Citation bot is not working. The OAuth dialog is not coming via the web interface, nothing happens (only throbber). Grimes2 (talk) 12:14, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Workaround: Use Gadget "Expand citations" before. This is with OAuth. OAuth is then valid also for the web interface. Grimes2 (talk) 13:04, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Just slow and overwhelmed. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:15, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
 * fixed

What is the purpose of edits like these?

 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Watching_You,_Watching_Me&diff=0&oldid=968718367
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Lookout_(album)&diff=0&oldid=975278502

They don't impact the layout of the page or do anything meaningful that I can see. If the bot is only changing something like swapping out "lang=en" for "language=English", then I propose that you don't make those kinds of edits to a page unless the bot is also making a change that will in some way change the functioning or appearance of the page. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:39, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * For the second example, Record Collector is not an academic or scholarly journal so both the cs1 template and the parameter are incorrect. If the bot is changing the value assigned to language from a WikiMedia-supported language code to the language name, it would be better if it didn't. Templates copied from en.wiki to other-language wikis will render &lt;code> in that wiki's language.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 10:09, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Those should still be marked cosmetic though. Fine to do, just not on their own. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:37, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Of course cosmetic, but I think that you missed the point I was trying to make. As long as there are separate periodical templates for magazines and for scholarly/academic journals, the bot should not be reinforcing the misuse of a  template when the cited source is not a journal.  To do that properly requires that the bot knows what kind of periodical is being cited.  Simply renaming the work alias to match the template name is, as the example shows, not always a correct action.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 11:56, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Which really is besides the point. Nothing is changed for the reader, and this highlight and remedies an inconsistency. If the issue was that e.g. L'Acadie Nouvelle is a newspaper and not a journal, then the underlying issue is you used a cite journal instead of cite newspaper. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:20, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Not at all beside the point. I have already agreed that when the only change that the bot makes is a parameter-name change that reflects the template name:   to , that change is cosmetic and unless accompanied by substantive, non-cosmetic, changes should not be made.  Even when accompanied by substantive changes, the   'fix' is not a fix, and won't highlight anything because such fixes will likely be lost among the substantive changes.  The correct fix for this example is   or for your example  .  To do that, the bot must know that Record Collector is a magazine and that L'Acadie Nouvelle is a newspaper.  When the bot does not know, it should not make these 'fixes'.  There is actually nothing wrong with Record Collector and L'Acadie Nouvelle.  The thing that is wrong is the use of  for these periodicals.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:36, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Let me say, first, that I'm quite happy with most of Citation bot's edits nowadays, so much so that I check, on average, only one out of two that pops up in my watchlist. I'm contributing to this talk page section while a few days ago I saw a WP:COSMETICBOT edit, this one, which I wasn't going to mention if it was an outlier, but since someone started a topic on such edits,... --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:18, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Many of these edits are intended to prevent future errors. For example, we have seem quite a few pages with multiple parameters in the work family of parameters, so we change work to magazine in cite magazine to help prevents such future errors of someone adding magazine.  We change the evil template cite to citation because cite looks like it is member of the cite journal family of templates, but it is really part of the citation family, and thus renders much differently: this change makes the inconsistent citations more obvious to editors and thus encourages future non-cosmetic edits to fix this problem.  first to first1 when first2 is present makes future editors lives easier when they are editing (a very very small amount I admit).   Removing of duplicate empty parameters makes editing easier and prevents future problems ("I should fill in that author1 because it is empty" which is good, but sadly last1 is already set in that template).  Replacing cite-web and web cite with cite web helps teach editors the right templates and introduces them to the whole CS1/CS2 family.  So, I would say that setting a good example for editors is not purely cosmetic - the underlying source code of the wikipages and the rendered pages are both products of wikipedia - in that it helps prevent future edits from going wrong.  I wonder exactly where the line should be drawn.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:36, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * can you take a look at this edit summary? I'm trying to "help teach" (as you say it) bots to not break the WP:COSMETICBOT policy. In other words, I'm rejecting the idea that policy infringements can be used to "help teach" editors whatever. The only thing editors can learn from such anomalies is that policy should not be respected with whatever meagre excuse one can conjure up. Don't think that is a road we should go. Lesson learnt? Tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:16, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * By the way, thank you for the amazin' bot, and I'll add to the "magazine vs. journal" issue. This bot reinforces the wrong use of "journal" all the time. I've seen a lot of cases where the only edit was that there was "{{cite journal | magazine=Nintendo Power" and the bot changes that to "{{cite journal | journal=Nintendo Power" or Electronic Gaming Monthly. It sounds like you're saying there is already a database of known magazines and journals by title, so these examples could be added, right? Even if not, this was just the bot's blind assumption which should not be made. I'd also suggest that once this example is added, the bot's edit history should be reviewed for exactly that instance. Thank you. — Smuckola(talk) 19:17, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

{{unindent}} This is ultimately a cosmetic issue, if you have cite journal, then the work cited should be a journal. If you have a cite magazine, the work cited should be a magazine. The bot remedies the discrepancy. If there's an underlying issue, then all you have to do it update the cite journal to a cite magazine, and the bot will instead convert {{para|journal}} to magazine. Compare
 * Cite journal
 * {{para|journal}} → {{cite journal |last=Smith |first=J. |year=2016 |title=Article |journal=Nintendo Power |volume=65 |issue=135 |pages=60−67}}
 * magazine → {{cite journal |last=Smith |first=J. |year=2016 |title=Article |magazine=Nintendo Power |volume=65 |issue=135 |pages=60−67}}


 * Cite magazine
 * {{para|journal}} → {{cite magazine |last=Smith |first=J. |year=2016 |title=Article |journal=Nintendo Power |volume=65 |issue=135 |pages=60−67}}
 * {{para|magazine}} → {{cite magazine |last=Smith |first=J. |year=2016 |title=Article |magazine=Nintendo Power |volume=65 |issue=135 |pages=60−67}}

In both cases, the visual output is unaffected, and readers see the exact same thing. All the bot does is make the journal/magazine discrepancy disappear. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:19, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

{{tl|notabug}}

Cleanup bad identifiers / url
Applies to basically every http://...identifier.org/foobar → foobar &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:50, 10 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a lot of work to do with custom code, but I think a generic solution would be easy. Have a list of identifiers to check.  Looped over those.  If any are urls, then hide the identifier and expand the url.  If the identifier is not set, then put back url sadly.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:44, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

Two consecutive edits?
Why would the bot need a second edit to remove a parameter it missed on its immediately preceding edit to Upton, Merseyside? Abductive (reasoning) 19:44, 20 November 2020 (UTC)


 * The Bot does not keep doing everything again and again until there are no changes. I will look into it. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:16, 23 November 2020 (UTC)


 * https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3690 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:24, 4 December 2020 (UTC)


 * fixed AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:20, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Produce edit
Hello and thanks for all the good work. I'm wondering about the reason for, where the bot unlinked the publisher. I've been systematically fixing certain bad links, many of which refer to publishers; should I be unlinking these articles instead? Certes (talk) 10:43, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The first thing, if it's a publisher, it should be in publisher, not journal. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:06, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Yet another junk citation produced by that abomination ve. Not a journal article so both   and   are wrong – should be University of Alaska, Cooperative Extension Service;   is not the author's name;   is not the date of the cited document (July 2015).
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 11:13, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 11:13, 7 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I didn't address the citation as a whole; I was simply bulk-changing bad wikilinks without rewriting the surrounding text.  Do we have a general guideline of deprecating wikilinks to the publisher/journal/newspaper/whatever?  I've been diverting links to their proper targets, e.g. 250 citations attributed to The Daily Telegraph which actually came from The Daily Telegraph (Sydney).  If I should instead be unlinking these sources then I'll reluctantly do so but would like some guideline to point to if challenged. Certes (talk) 11:32, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

fixed I belive. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:01, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Quotation-marked titles
See this edit. Citation bot removes quoation marks around cite titles ('...' in this case, but I've seen "...", too), even though the original source title also contains them, given that the title itself is a quote. I could not immediately find a MOS entry that speaks against this formatting, so I don't think CB should perform changes on these instances. IceWelder &#91; &#9993; &#93; 09:07, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * In almost every case, the quotes that exist are added when a plane text citation is converted to a CS template. In the rare cases that they belong to the original reference, a comment should be added to stop both human and bot editors. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:36, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
 * notabug, and flagged that one citation in source. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:58, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Returning to bad habits
Please see Talk:Bist du bei mir, second bullet of the OP. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:30, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
 * no idea what those folks are talking about. i didn't see a diff where citation bot was filling in titles missing translations. that's not even in scope of what citation bot does. — Chris Capoccia 💬 14:54, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
 * even looking at the diff on that article, deleting year when there is already date is correct. adding hdl parameter when the url is hdl is correct. deleting blank editor when there is already editor first/last is correct. adding missing issue is correct. again, no idea why these folks think that is a disruptive edit. — Chris Capoccia 💬 14:57, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
 * notabug I guess. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:14, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

location vs place
I received this complaint about Citation bot's behavior on my talk page: Abductive  (reasoning) 09:27, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

"*Don't replace publication-place Hi Abductive, in this edit you changed a publication-place parameter into a location parameter in a citation. Please don't do that, they are not the same. By changing the parameter you are invalidating the information in the citation. publication-place is, obviously, for the publication place, and location is for the written-at-place. (The mixup is likely because in the past location was a parameter used for both.) Thanks. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 09:13, 5 December 2020 (UTC)"


 * Location is not for the "written at" place, location is the location of the publisher. "Written at" is not bibliographical information ever presented in reference lists in any style guide. location and publication-place are alias of each other, and the only place there's a distinction is in cite conference to indicate the location of the conference vs the location of the publisher. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:18, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
 * While Matthias is correct, we have a category tracking where both are used because we are entertaining deprecating the separate behavior. Its size is ~300 pages. Removal of the parameter is in the domain of Help talk:CS1, but I'd recommend ignoring the complaint. --Izno (talk) 14:13, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Since the Bot does not do this for cite conference or if conference=something, then I guess notabug. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:14, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

reverse order for editors?
https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3693 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:13, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Please approval Thiyyar wikipedia page
Thiyya and Ezhava is separate cast new kerala government order. Please approval Thiyyar page Nandanavijayan (talk) 15:00, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
 * This is not the place for undoing admin actions. Abductive  (reasoning) 04:18, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * notabug

Edit war between User:JCW-CleanerBot and User:Citation Bot over at Effectiveness of Alcoholics Anonymous
There has been an edit war between User:JCW-CleanerBot and User:Citation Bot over at Effectiveness of Alcoholics Anonymous:


 * JCW-CleanerBot prefers one name for a journal
 * But Citation Bot prefers another name
 * So an edit war begins
 * Which I have hopefully stopped

I have added a comment to the journal name asking Citation Bot to please stop changing the name so this edit war stops. This is the second Citation Bot bug I have had to deal with over at Effectiveness of Alcoholics Anonymous SkylabField (talk) 18:54, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The issue here is that Citation bot is adding a journal to a book / not recognizing that it is the title of the series because the metadata includes the fluff of ": (An|The) Official..." . &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:14, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
 * fixed in string compare function AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:51, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Can't get bot to check category
I'm asking the bot to check the category 2019 in British television through this link. I click "process pages in category" and then nothing happens. No error message, nothing. Has happened before as well. Any ideas?-- 5 albert square (talk) 20:29, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Works for me. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:21, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I've tried again and still nothing. I'm not even getting the message saying that Citation Bot needs access?-- 5 albert square (talk) 03:45, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * What are you doing exactly? What to you type, in what box, what do you click, etc...?? &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:55, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I literally go to the link above from the bot's page, I enter the name of the page or category I want to check, click to process it and then sometimes nothing happens. I tried it just now on Postman Pat just as a random article and it worked. However, earlier I tried the category mentioned above, left my laptop for hours and it didn't process anything. One time it came up with a 504 error message. When I tried again, nothing. Cleared my cache and no difference. I'm wondering if the bot was too busy processing other requests?-- 5 albert square (talk) 04:08, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * If you have a 504 timeout, usually the bot does process things eventually, it just craps out on the page you see. Check and you'll find the categories (and your username) in the edit history. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:27, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah thanks it's worked now, just wasn't earlier when I tried :)-- 5 albert square (talk) 04:30, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

fixed for now.

Citation bot changes cs1 to cs2
The citation bot changed cite to citation in IBM System/370, changing the rendering to cs2. While I prefer cs2, doing this automatically seems to violate WP:CITEVAR. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 03:22, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
 * cite redirects to citation. It's not CS1. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:38, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
 * cite looks like CS1, but is really CS2: that makes it a bad template.  Citation journal similarly looks like CS2, but is really CS1.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:30, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Consider for some short list of redirects changing from the redirect name to the canonical name. For citation I'd suggest changing from Template:Cite and Template:Cite citation to Template:Citation. Citation journal might be another one to change to Cite journal. --Izno (talk) 18:37, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you! AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:15, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
 * notabug