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

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

Submit a Bug Report

Please click here to report an error.

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

Feature requests

[edit]

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

[edit]

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

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

URL removed

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


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

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

[edit]

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

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

CITEVAR and manually formatted references

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

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

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

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

STILL creating new CS1 errors

[edit]

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

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

Stop it.

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

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

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

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

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


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

caps

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


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

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

Unreal page numbers from PubMed

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


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

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

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


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

WP:COSMETICBOT

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


Removes page link

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


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

Not sure what you mean by "search is not displayed on the same page". Using the link in the old version, namely [2], the quotation "dépêche-vous..." appears at the top of the Google Books page. But using the link in this version, as revised by Citation bot, namely [3], the overview page of the book is shown, not the page with the quote. Tested in Chrome 130.0.6723.117 (on x86_64 MacOS), Firefox 131.0.2, and Safari 18.1 (19619.2.8.111.5, 19619). --Macrakis (talk) 21:29, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please check in incognito mode. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:11, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the ida. I checked in incognito mode in Chrome. The edited link now does show the quotation, though in a different place on the page. The reason appears to be that in incognito, I'm using the default Google Books, while in logged-in mode, I'm using the new Google Books interface. Shouldn't Citation bot work with both the new and the old Google Books? --Macrakis (talk) 16:21, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The reality is the old google books is much more likely to work for people. The new format is dependent upon javascript while the old version is not. Google needs to figure this out. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:27, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]


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

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

author/first --> last/first

[edit]
Status
new bug
Reported by
Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:21, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What should happen
[7]
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


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

web vs book

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


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

Same here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Root-finding_algorithm&diff=1263375628&oldid=1263149178&variant=en — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dominic3203 (talk • contribs) 01:56, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong parameter

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


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

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

Good bot

[edit]
ReallyGoodBotAward(R)
w/ love Hym3242 (talk) 17:09, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Extra text in pages

[edit]
Status
new bug
Reported by
Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:52, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What should happen
[8]
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


Cosmetic edit

[edit]
Status
new bug
Reported by
Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:16, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
[9]
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


Also: Special:diff/1261279289 at Apollo et Hyacinthus where |last=, |first= and |author-link= are unnecessarily replaced by |last1=, |first1= and |author-link1=. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:33, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

date/time

[edit]
Status
new bug
Reported by
Guy1890 (talk) 05:24, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
the bot has several times tried to add a date (September 27, 2019) to a citation in 2024 United States presidential election for a link that's from very recently
Relevant diffs/links
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2024_United_States_presidential_election&diff=1261450900&oldid=1261437186
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


I've seen this twice in the same article, I think, on the very same citation. I've reverted it twice. Guy1890 (talk) 05:24, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Source html meta properties include:
<meta property="article:published_time" content="2019-09-27T11:17:35-05:00" />
<meta property="article:modified_time" content="2024-12-02T14:25:21-06:00" />
Why wasn't |date= already specified in the {{Cite web}} template?
Sometimes web sources have bogus publication dates due to their own laziness, and Citation bot should also probably prefer modified_time over published_time, but I doubt it would be doing this if the citation template had been filled out properly in the first place. (You could also add an empty |date= param with an html comment to make Citation bot leave it alone if dates are deemed unnecessary given the article scope.) Folly Mox (talk) 10:16, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Parameters added. Folly Mox (talk) 10:23, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The bot gets dates from Zotero. The problmen with modified_time is that it is very often set to right now or something very close to that, even when nothing has changed or something trivial like the advertisement network used. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:24, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Gradually garbled

[edit]

Here is a case study in how Citation bot gradually garbles references, in this case to a journal paper, garbled because the journal issue was also published as a book and the bot adds more and more of the book metadata to the citation until it is broken. There isn't really a single bug to point to, but most of the problem is through the process of repeated editing by Citation bot.

In Euler's totient function, the Ford 1998 paper "The distribution of totients" is from a special issue of The Ramanujan Journal. The entire issue was also printed as a book, Analytic and Elementary Number Theory: A Tribute to Mathematical Legend Paul Erdos. (Both the book series and the journal had the same publisher and editor.)

  • Special:Diff/562263776, 2013-06-30: A human editor adds the citation, with only journal metadata. It is given zbl and issn ids but no other link.
  • Special:Diff/605019090, 2014-04-20: User:Rjwilmsi uses a script to add the book doi to the journal citation. The first crack in an otherwise ok journal citation?
  • Special:Diff/837446184, 2018-04-20: User:Nemo bis uses OAbot to add an arXiv id. The arXiv link calls it a new and corrected version of the paper rather than a reprint, but it lists the journal metadata (not the book metadata), clearly indicating the author's preference for that citation. So far, we have a citation where the full journal metadata is consistently displayed, together with two ids (the arXiv and doi) that point to different versions but may be useful to readers as easier to access than the official journal version; this is not unusual.
  • Special:Diff/1060227676, 2021-12-13: The first edit by Citation bot is the first to make the reference visibly schizophrenic, and starts its process of gradually grinding mildly-inconsistent citations into something unrecognizable. It takes the journal citation and adds series= and isbn= parameters from the book doi, neither of which belong in a cite journal but are at least displayed without error. This gives us a journal article, labeled as being in a journal that is in a named series or maybe a journal issue that is in a named series (incorrect), with an isbn that is both incorrect and unhelpful (readers are not going to use it to find this paper). Note that this book happens to be volume 1 in this book series; the citation keeps the volume numbering from the journal metadata (volume 2). The book's pagination happens to be the same as the journal's, fortunately.
  • Special:Diff/1251661460, 2024-10-17: Citation bot changes cite journal to cite book, causing a CS1 citation format error because of the remaining journal= parameter, which the cite book citation cannot use. (The book citation also ignores the journal number= parameter, which remains present but not displayed.) As well as this, the changed citation is now actually erroneous in saying that the book is "vol. 2"; it is neither volume 2 of its series nor part of a multi-volume book. The edit is immediately undone by a human editor.
  • Special:Diff/1263035191, 2024-12-14: Same as 2024-10-17.

I hesitate to think what the citation would look like if the last two edits weren't undone before the bot did something else to it again. I have separated out the book reprint and arXiv update from the journal citation but I'm skeptical that some bot won't come around and add back the doi to the journal citation and start the same cycle all over again. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:13, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And now Citation bot has been sent to run over the same article only a day after the previous run, as part of another batch run rather than out of any particular attention from this thread. After my separation it added the correct doi to the journal citation so we should be ok for now. But in most cases such frequent re-polishing is a waste of resources. Can we maybe try not to run the bot so frequently on the same articles? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:24, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bug: Reference to book changed into reference to preface

[edit]

In Special:Diff/1263938325, the bot changed a citation to a book into a citation to the preface for its second edition. I have no idea why. There was no metadata in the {{cite book}} that pointed to anything more specific (like a chapter DOI) which might have triggered it. That would be suboptimal but at least understandable. XOR'easter (talk) 19:46, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

the 1106.1445 arxiv points to the preface. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:21, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
{{wontfix}} AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:15, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Two questions. First, will this edit stop that from happening again? And second, can the documentation say somewhere that the bot uses the "related DOI" field in the arXiv metadata in this way? That would help diagnosing future glitches. XOR'easter (talk) 21:37, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The arXiv is used to get the DOI, and then the DOI is used. So, all one needs to do is block the DOI with a comment (if there is no DOI) or better yet add the correct DOI. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:33, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

punctuation-only author parameter

[edit]
Status
 Fixed
Reported by
Trappist the monk (talk) 01:07, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
bot creates meaningless punctuation-only author parameter |author1=-- which cs1|2 rejects as a numeric name error
What should happen
When a namelist parameter (author, contributor, editor, interviewer, translator) resolves to only punctuation characters or numeric characters (or combination of both), omit the parameter. Or, perhaps better, abandon the edit.
Relevant diffs/links
Special:Diff/1264867873


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