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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 73.44.31.228 (talk) at 01:00, 16 March 2023 (→‎503: new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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I see that your bot is adding links to copies of articles on CiteSeerX; for example this change to abstract data type. CiteSeerX is very indiscriminate about where it gets copies of papers from; the accuracy of such a copy vis-a-vis the officially published version, and the provenance of the copy, cannot be verified by a bot. In this particular case, the online copy appears to be taken from a class web site unaffiliated by the authors of the original paper. The owner of the course web site is probably safe from copyright violation as course reading lists have powerful fair use exemptions to copyright, but CiteSeerX and Wikipedia do not. Using it here appears to be a copyright violation and a violation of WP:ELNEVER. If your bot cannot make such judgements accurately, it should not be making them at all. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:46, 26 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, this concern is discussed here. − Pintoch (talk) 08:24, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I posted this before discovering that page, but let's centralize the discussion there. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:54, 27 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
OAbot is again adding CiteSeerX links, apparently automatically. The next one I see after this warning that is not traceable back to the author or publisher will lead to a block. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:09, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Biorxiv

In [1], the bot added a CHS Press doi, thinking it was a biorxiv doi. Please update the behaviour. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:05, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Headbomb: done, thanks. − Pintoch (talk) 17:59, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Instead of removing the section outright, you might want to simply check that such DOI point to the biorxiv repository. E.g. if you follow doi:10.1101/063081 and the link resolves to http://biorxiv.org/... then it's a biorxiv doi. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:14, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Headbomb: Unfortunately I do not have the time to do that. If anybody wants to implement that, I will be happy to merge it. − Pintoch (talk) 10:01, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please tag as "bot"

Hi, a lot of your recent changes such as to Sea urchin were NOT tagged as coming from a bot and so couldn't be filtered out. Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:22, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for noting it; I was about to check it this morning. It seems the bot flag is being ignored, we'll perform some more checks with Pintoch. --Nemo 09:50, 12 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Headbomb, thanks for approving the bot. It seems to me that although the BRFA has been closed, the account has not been tagged with the bot flag. Where should we request that? − Pintoch (talk) 11:49, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux: should be able to help here. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:04, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, this account is flagged as bot. Please note, in your bot software you must assert that you are a bot on edits to have the bot flagged applied when using the writeapi. — xaosflux Talk 15:11, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that was fixed. The problem was using OAuth credentials rather than a password. --Nemo 18:15, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Change matching

The bot briefly added links to hal.upmc.fr instead of pmc= identifiers. The error has been corrected. --Nemo 16:46, 16 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

See this edit. OAbot added |pmc=2000340 to a {{cite journal}} that had this as its title: |title=The coupling of synthesis and partitioning of EBV's [[plasmid]] replicon is revealed in live cells. Note that the value assigned to |title= contains a wikilink so the rendered citation had a URL–wikilink conflict error:

Nanbo, Asuka; Arthur Sugden; Bill Sugden (2007). "The coupling of synthesis and partitioning of EBV's [[plasmid]] replicon is revealed in live cells". The European Molecular Biology Organization Journal. 26 (19): 4252–4262. doi:10.1038/sj.emboj.7601853. PMC 2000340. {{cite journal}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)

The bot should not be creating errors for editors to cleanup.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:22, 9 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, I thought this had been fixed but I'm not sure how. What's the recommended way to proceed? I'd remove the wikilink if anything. Alternatively, the template could avoid linkifying such titles. --Nemo 19:14, 9 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we should be wikilinking terms in titles, as this example does. On the other hand, some references are themselves notable, and in those cases the title seems to be the logical place to put the link to the article about that reference. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:18, 9 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I guess I would suggest:
  1. if the content of |title= is not wholly wikilinked:
    1. remove the wikilink(s) (the example above)
  2. if the whole of |title= is wikilinked or if the template has |title-link= then:
    1. do-not add |pmc= or
    2. add |pmc= with the identifier commented out (|pmc=<!--pmc identifier-->) or
    3. add |id={{pmc|pmc identifier}}
I agree that we should not be wikilinking individual terms or phrases in a template's title-holding parameters because such links, while perhaps useful in article text are not really likely to help readers locate a copy of the source. We might modify Module:Citation/CS1 to detect wikinked terms and phrases – that's a topic for WT:CS1.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:58, 9 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Still not fixed. See this edit and this edit. Do not break cs1|2 citations and leave the mess for editors to clean up.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:16, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I was going to fix them manually myself as they are so rare and they all go into Category:CS1 errors: URL–wikilink conflict (or don't they?). Nemo 17:59, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Still not fixed. Do not break cs1|2 citations and leave the mess for editors to clean up.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:20, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm fixing those, no worries. Nemo 15:31, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently not, see this edit. Just fix the bot so that neither you nor I have to fix the broken templates.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:19, 29 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The bot is not approved to change titles and skipping identifiers would be a loss, so I prefer to fix those few cases manually. Nemo 15:36, 29 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

OAbot adding redundant parameters

Why, if a citation has the parameter PMC, and that field is not empty, is OAbot adding pmc=? Edits such as this and this result in CS1 errors where there were none before. Whilst I've not yet seen the same problem with pmid/PMID, it seems possible. Perhaps you could make parameter names case-insensitive? Cheers, BlackcurrantTea (talk) 13:43, 23 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A valid question. Perhaps we could run a bot to change all "PMC=" to "pmc="? As far as I can see, the uppercase is non-standard. There are only 350 such usages currently, so I think it's best to fix the odd syntax rather than optimise for edge cases. --Nemo 07:13, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Edge case? In cs1|2, all identifier parameter names may be written uppercase or lowercase (mixed case not accepted). When deciding to add an identifier to a cs1|2 template, bots must look for all of the accepted parameter name forms or aliases before making the addition. This to me is only common sense.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 08:37, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'd add that limiting PMC and PMID to lowercase is counter-intuitive. When editors see them in a potential source, e.g. here, and when they appear in references in articles, they're capitalised. As dois are lowercase, editors are less likely to use DOI; those might be the edge cases. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 10:22, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Lowercase is by far more standard, and uppercase will be normalized to lowercase by bots/awb most of the time. So please use that. Uppercase is just to make it friendlier to people that may not know the convention. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:33, 26 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The acceptability of identifier parameter names in either uppercase or lowercase is documented, e.g. in cite journal for eissn/EISSN and isbn/ISBN. Although PMC and PMID are undocumented, they function in the template as pmc and pmid do. It doesn't make sense to me to require editors to adapt to the bot rather than adapting the bot to editors. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 10:40, 28 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, which is why bots can and do fix the inconsistencies all the time to simplify the users' job. --Nemo 11:25, 28 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I see others have mentioned this. Nemo, as you're one of the maintainers, have we a chance of this being fixed? BlackcurrantTea (talk) 22:55, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
There are now less than 100 instances that require fixing, we'll take care of that with the bot in the near future. --Nemo 10:17, 2 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That's good news. Thank you. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 04:12, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T228666

Hello, at rheumatic fever, the bot added a PMC link to an article from 1938 to a PMID from a 2012 article with the same title. Graham87 03:18, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I see at https://dissem.in/p/70990242/rheumatic-heart-disease that this is one of those relatively rare but very annoying cases where dozens or even hundreds of articles have been published with the same title. We already have a patch for it at https://github.com/dissemin/dissemin/issues/512 and hopefully it will be fixed within a couple of weeks. Nemo 07:29, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Another example here. Please don't just match on title, please match on additional key parameters such as journal name, year, volume, page start number etc. I am surprised it was ever thought suitable to just match on title. Otherwise the bot is sometimes adding PMCs for papers with the same/nearly the same name by different authors, or a different version of a dated paper, or reprints 50 years later in different journals. While reprints may be the same paper is it NOT in my view acceptable to simply add the PMC for a reprint (you don't know if it's a full reprint, partial, edited etc.) - if the original paper has no full free text and the reprint does then the bot would need to have approval to add a separate cite/link for the reprint so it's clear it is a reprint. Rjwilmsi 06:32, 22 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what made you think that this is the fault of a title match: in fact, in your example, authors and journal match, while the title is different. It seems my patch to avoid such overmerging on Dissemin is not going to be merged, so I'll try and add some more post-suggestion checks. Nemo 11:56, 21 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm recreating the link suggestions with the new code and will launch a new bot run today. Nemo 07:51, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I've sampled a number of edits and they were all helpful. Nemo 20:28, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

url vs chapter-url

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T234522

When a citation is of a chapter in a book (|chapter= or |contribution= is present), the bot needs to distinguish between a URL for the chapter vs one for the book. For example, in this edit, the bot found a URL for the cited chapter (not the whole book) and put it in |url=, when it should have put it in |chapter-url=. If it had done that, it might have noticed that |chapter-url= already contained an equivalent URL. Kanguole 13:00, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the report. That edit is determined by the presence of the DOI: the citation is about the specific chapter, not about the book, otherwise the DOI would be wrong. It's therefore correct to use the URL parameter, although I agree it's better not to have two URLs pointing to the same resource. Nemo 16:02, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The DOI points at the chapter, so surely the corresponding URL would belong in |chapter-url=, because |url= is for a URL for the whole book. Kanguole 16:14, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
What I read in Template:Citation#URL doesn't confirm it. The URL parameter points to the "publication" i.e. the entire work, but both the book and the individual chapter can be considered works by themselves (otherwise the chapter wouldn't have a DOI). If you want to make it clear that the citation is about the book, it's advisable to use {{cite book}}.
Again, I'm not saying I disagree with your suggestion, I'm just explaining why OAbot ended up suggesting that URL. Nemo 17:44, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
To cite a chapter, one can use either {{citation}} or {{cite book}} with |chapter= – they both work in the same way but give slightly different formatting. The documentation isn't great, but there are separate parameters |url= and |chapter-url=, with the former attaching a link to the book title and the latter attaching it to the chapter name. Kanguole 17:56, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Hence, if you want the citation to be about the book, using {{cite book}} is the clearest option. Nemo 05:47, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm trying to explain to you that the choice between those templates is supposed to be based on formatting (punctuation and capitalization) and whether |href= is set by default, not whether bots misunderstand them. If the bot isn't going to be fixed, I guess the exclusion template is the easiest answer. Kanguole 07:38, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, the choice of templates should be dictated by what those templates are designed to do. Are you saying that you want to cite a book but avoid using the apposite template {{cite book}} because of formatting preferences? Nemo 09:22, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, I'm saying that {{citation}} (citation style 2) is intended as an alternative to the family of cite XXX templates (citation style 1). If the bot cannot handle a {{citation}} containing |chapter= (or |contribution=), it should leave it alone. Kanguole 10:49, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! I had definitely not understood this was your aim. As far as I know, {{cite book}} and friends can use CS2 as well, by setting the mode parameter. Did I miss something? Nemo 11:25, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If I have an article full of perfectly valid {{citation}} templates, it seems unreasonable to have to change one of them to {{cite book}} with |mode=cs2 just because a bot doesn't handle the template correctly. Kanguole 11:31, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Not because of the bot, but because the {{citation}} template isn't able to convey the information you intend (that the citation is about the entire book rather than the chapter only). Nemo 11:50, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It is: whether using {{citation}} or {{cite book}}, it is the presence of |chapter= that indicates that what is being cited is the chapter, not the whole book. In that situation, the URL found should go in |chapter-url=, not |url=. So the Phab task isn't quite right as stated: it's the presence of |chapter= that triggers the problem, not the presence of |chapter-url=. Kanguole 16:13, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Further on this point: {{citation}} treats whatever it is citing as a book when all of the 'work' parameters are omitted or empty: |journal=, |magazine=, |newspaper=, |periodical=, |website=. |work=. There is oddity when |encyclopedia= is set but I don't think that is at issue here.
|chapter= has these aliases: |contribution=, |entry=, |article=, and |section=; each has its own matching |<param>-url= parameter. For the purposes of semantics, the pairs should match.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:20, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Blocked

I have blocked OAbot for adding copyvio links to references, after a previous warning was ignored. Specifically, the bot is adding CiteSeerX links without checking whether the links trace back to an author or publisher (not a copyvio), or to somebody else. Additionally, I don't believe the addition of such links was ever in the bot's remit; my recollection is that when the bot was reviewed, this issue was specifically discussed and removed from the list of approved bot tasks. As an example of a bad edit, see this diff, where the bot adds a citeseer link to a paper by László Székely, but the citeseer provenance of the link is to web pages of Micha Sharir and Bill Gasarch (neither of whom is an author or publisher of the paper). —David Eppstein (talk) 19:39, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Considering you opposed the task which was approved to perform these edits, I would consider this block WP:INVOLVED and I suggest that you reverse it, asking the intervention of an uninvolved admin instead.
There is no copyright infringement in that diff and the link is explicitly allowed by WP:COPYLINKS anyway. Nemo 23:14, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I have asked for administrative review of both the block and my involvement; see WP:ANI#Request for block review. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:35, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
David Epstein is correct here. OABot 3 was about flagging existing identifiers as free, and adding free dois and hdls and the like. CiteSeerX has been deemed too contentious to add automatically in the past and OABot 3 does not overturn that consensus. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:37, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

April 2020

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who accepted the request.

OAbot (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

Request reason:

After various requests, and having consulted the sole other active bot operator Pintoch, I request unblock of User:OAbot to add doi/hdl/arxiv/pmc parameters. Details below. Nemo 16:14, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Accept reason:

Ok for runs not including the addition of citeseerx, the reason for the block David Eppstein (talk) 16:41, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

According to consensus and bot task 3 (and previous), the bot this run will be launched with the command bot.py (hdl|doi|pmc|arxiv), which adds only those identifiers (and corresponding parameters like doi-access=free) and doesn't add CiteSeerX parameters nor any URL.

For the sake of transparency, some statistics about the edits the bot will attempt to do: after having gone through most of the articles with relevant citations, we have found about 75k articles to work on (each requires a single edit) and the parameters to be touched have the following frequency so far: 

 145759 doi
   7758 hdl
   1180 pmc
    464 arxiv

So this unblock is 99 % about adding doi-access=free and hdl-access=free to citations where the doi and hdl have been added by others (including recent citation cleanups). The addition of pmc and arxiv parameters has never been controversial but I can do these separately in the future if anyone prefers so.

As a reminder, the operators of User:OAbot are not directly responsible for edits made with the sibling tool by individual users, some of whom remain separately blocked. Nemo 16:14, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding this edit, I am unable to find access to the free full text in any of those links, yet the source is flagged by OABot. I don't speak bot; could someone explain, and help me locate a URL to free full text? @Nemo bis and Pintoch: SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:13, 17 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your question. I'm not sure I understand what you are having problems with, though. The way to locate the full text is normally to
  1. go to the References section;
  2. choose a green lock;
  3. click the link before the green lock;
  4. look for the full text in the HTML page itself, or for a prominent download button or icon, or for some other link to HTML or PDF or other.
So for instance note 6 links https://hdl.handle.net/10871%2F36535 which has a icon near the top left which links the PDF [2].
Does this answer the question? Nemo 16:58, 17 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
In general search for "PDF" is a good quick way to find something, but here it's clearly marked with a download icon. Search for PDF also works, if you missed the icon. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:06, 17 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I will start over, so you all will see how much I don't understand what is happening here.
  • But I finally figured out that I can find the PDF by clicking on the hdl link (I had never heard of hdl and did not know to click there-- I don't think our readers will either)
My additional confusion might be better understood by looking at Karel Styblo
  • I see a green link on the first citation, and clicking on that takes me to a free full-text URL
  • But the bot just added something to the Migliori citation which is different; there is no green OA lock.
    • But if I go to the Migliori citation, I can find a full-text PDF by clicking on the DOI, which is inconsistent with the Dementia with Lewy bodies situation, where I have to click on the hdl.
My aim is consistent citations, and I don't know why there is a green link on some, but not others, or why I have to click on hdl for the link on one, but DOI for another, and yet PMC for another-- confusing to readers ? Does this explain my confusion and need for clarification? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:30, 17 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@SandyGeorgia: Do you not see the green lock? The reason there is a green lock on some, and not others, is that those with a green lock have been identified as open access resources. Like the Migliori doi, which is marked with a green locked. I don't know why you don't see it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:52, 17 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The plot thickens. I see the green lock in the link you give above. On my iPad, I see the green locks in the articles linked above. On my PC, I do not see the green locks in the articles, either with Google Chrome or with IE. It's a browser thing. But it is still odd that I can see some of the green locks on my PC, but not others. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:23, 17 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes the locks do not load for some JavaScript or CSS failure in my browser, but a refresh fixes it. Just for the sake of clarity, I've uploaded some screenshots of references with green locks which should be what we're supposed to be seeing (apart from custom fonts and skins). The green/red squares I've added myself, of course. Nemo 19:24, 17 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
OK, so I shall stop worrying, then, about whether I see the green lock ... sorry for all the questions! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:37, 17 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like a caching/WP:PURGE issue. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:48, 17 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, yes ... that did the trick. Unwatching now-- thanks for the help, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:58, 17 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Non-free flagged as free

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MNDO&curid=2235160&diff=951504589&oldid=913941897 probably not your problem. Probably upstream data, but no full text. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:29, 18 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Reported. Nemo 21:10, 18 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
How/where does one report those? AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:30, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
See https://support.unpaywall.org/support/solutions/folders/44000384007 Nemo 22:36, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Better edit summary, please

Can you please fix the generated edit summary to better reflect what the bot is actually doing? In this edit, the bot claimed Open access bot: doi added to citation with #oabot, but the previous version already had a doi, so that's misleading. The correct summary would have been, marked doi-access as free, or some such. Thanks. Mathglot (talk) 21:18, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Would it be enough to say "parameter added to citation for doi, hdl" etc.? Nemo 22:37, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That's still avoiding the point, because it doesn't say what parameter was added and how the addition changes the citation. Why do you object to the less-obfuscatory and shorter summary suggested by Mathglot? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:45, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Simply because oabot doesn't know what parameters were added, currently. That part of the job is done by a library, which merges existing and new parameters. I'd need to compute the diff to know what was actually changed. Or in other words, patches welcome. Nemo 23:01, 19 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I see what the problem is. Are those the only two possibilities, then, namely either adding doi, or adding/changing doi-access? If so, the summary might say, altered doi and/or doi-access param (or better wording). If there's more than two, it might get complicated, but maybe you can extrapolate and suggest something. Adding David Eppstein. Mathglot (talk) 00:03, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Mathglot: Just so you know, pinging another user doesn't work when you modify an existing comment on a talk page. I noticed this anyway because I happen to have this talk page watchlisted for now. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:54, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
Dear OAbot, Thanks for working on the page "Madhu Verma", I appreciate that. Could you please let me know, what is the next steps, before it is made online/visible to public Nehamidha (talk) 07:35, 4 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Nehamidha: thanks! The edit OAbot made on Madhu Verma is already visible (you can see a small green lock next to the DOI in the reference). − Pintoch (talk) 07:51, 4 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong PMC link - April 2020

Hi, in the section above, incorrect addition of PMC links was reported. It was stated there that the issue was resolved in July 2019, however here is an edit from April 2020 where again the bot has picked the PMC for a paper with a similar title but in a different journal, different volume, year etc. Please advise why this is still happening? Rjwilmsi 16:18, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is a correct match found by Unpaywall: the actual article is on Animal Genetics, while the Elsevier DOI is a mere stand-in which only carries an abstract identical to that of the actual article. I've corrected the DOI. Nemo 15:05, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Adding more journals as doi-access=free

Hi, I'm adding content to Wikipedia using material published by Annual Reviews, starting with journals that had paywalls removed. Three journals are now freely-accessible: Annual Review of Political Science, Annual Review of Public Health, and Annual Review of Cancer Biology (read more here). It would be great if those three titles could be added to the OABot workflow, so that it can add doi-access=free where possible. Thanks, Elysia (AR) (talk) 14:58, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Elysia (AR), nice to see more promotion of open access works! I think OAbot already works with Annual Reviews: you can check whether the DOIs you're working on are currently marked as gold OA by Unpaywall, and/or you can test manually with the web interface at https://oabot.org . Nemo 14:57, 25 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

DML.cz in April 2020

doi-access=free does not work with title=none

In citations that use |title=none, adding doi-access=free now causes the citation template to emit an error message; see e.g. this diff. Unless/until the citation template is changed to re-allow this combination, I consider any additions of doi-access=free to such citations to be damage caused by the bot that must be stopped from happening. So to avoid messier ways of stopping it, please check for title=none and avoid altering these citations. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:24, 4 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Now fixed on the template side of things? See Help talk:Citation Style 1 for discussion. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:12, 4 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

September 6th: NYC COVID-19 Multilingual Wikipedia Edit-a-thon - ONLINE

September 6, 2-4pm E.S.T: NYC COVID-19 Multilingual Wikipedia Edit-a-thon - ONLINE

You are invited to join the Sure We Can community for our NYC COVID-19 Multilingual Wikipedia Edit-a-thon - ONLINE - this Sunday, Sept 6th, 2020. The edit-a-thon is part of Sure We Can's work with NYC Health + Hospitals to stop the spread of Covid-19. We plan to work on translating the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City article into other languages; as well as, brainstorm ideas about how we could use wikipedia to slow the spread of Covid-19. Please join us, all skill levels welcome!

Is there an idea you'd like to share? A question you'd like answered? Have an idea how we can use wikipedia to slow the spread of Covid-19? Please, let us know by adding it to the agenda.

2:00pm - 4:00 pm online via Zoom (optional breakout rooms available)

--Wil540 art (talk) 20:04, 4 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Do not add doi-access=free to cite journal with title=none

In this recent edit the bot broke one of the citations by adding |doi-access=free to a {{cite journal}} template with |title=none. That combination of parameters does not work and has not worked since the doi autolinking RFC was implemented. Bot edits like this should never cause a valid citation template to become a broken citation template. In the long term, maybe, the cite journal template maintainers can be persuaded to allow that combination of parameters to work. In the short term, the bot must be prevented from making broken citations. That could be done by making the bot recognize that |doi-access=free and |title=none are incompatible, and not adding the parameter in those cases. Or it could be done by holding off on making any more bot edits until the bug in the citation templates is fixed (if it ever is). Which would be preferable? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:06, 20 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, in this edit the bot is edit-warring to reinstate its bad version after it was reverted. To me that looks like a blockable offense. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:19, 20 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Really this should be a temporary fix while the core problem (the template misbehaving) is fixed. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:27, 20 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
How long is temporary? Is the core problem ever going to be fixed? It was discussed as a problem on Help talk:Citation Style 1 last May but with no movement towards getting it fixed. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:51, 20 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the lack of response here, but I was waiting for the template storm to settle down. What's the outcome, do we have an established consensus on how the template parameters are supposed to work? Nemo 11:12, 30 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

December 2020 run

Based on the current refresh the bot is making several thousands edits now, mostly doi-access=free additions. Nemo 11:10, 30 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

doi-access at War guilt question

What is the point of this edit at War guilt question? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 05:18, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Mathglot: I believe you refer to this instead. The point is to indicate that the source can be accessed freely from the publisher. The |url= parameter can be removed and the title will automatically be linked with the DOI. If the publisher decides to change the format of its URLs, the DOI will remain valid and will point to the article, so that prevents link rot. − Pintoch (talk) 07:37, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your reply. Yes, but the doi does not require the access param to be there in order to be linked if the url is removed, unless there's been a CS1 change I'm not aware of. The linkage is automatic, free or not, iirc, which makes this change not an improvement to the article, because it doesn't affect the rendering of the link either now, or in the future if the url is removed. That's what I meant by, "what's the point". Mathglot (talk) 08:40, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"the doi does not require the access param to be there in order to be linked " it does. Compare
with
  • Wittgens, Herman J. (1980). "War Guilt Propaganda Conducted by the German Foreign Ministry During the 1920s". Historical Papers / Communications Historiques. 15 (1). Canadian Historical Association: 228–247. doi:10.7202/030859ar. ISSN 0068-8878. OCLC 1159619139.
It also adds the free-to-read DOI icon. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:32, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Odd but not incorrect match

I'm curious: how did the bot determine in Special:Diff/1020105627 that a preprint with a title beginning "Ideals" was a match for a published paper with a title beginning "Filters"? It is a match, but a bot should not be guessing that things match based on authors and similar but not identical titles, because in many cases the same authors will have different papers with similar titles. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:20, 27 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, good question. By looking at the diff alone I would have guessed it's a DOI match (i.e. the DOI was linked to the arxiv ID either on arxiv itself or on Unpaywall), but I'm not 100 % sure. I'd need to check.
We used to do title matching more, but we no longer really do it for the bot, although the tool may still do some when manually requested to examine a page. That is, we mostly check the titles (and authors, and date, IIRC) to reject a suggestion from Dissemin when it looks "unsafe". Nemo 06:32, 27 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
ArXiv definitely doesn't list a doi for this one. Is unpaywall a reliable source for this sort of information? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:35, 27 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's what confuses me: for Unpaywall to provide a match on ArXiv, usually the DOI would need to be on the ArXiv record itself. I've not verified that this match actually came from Unpaywall, so let's not get ahead of ourselves. At the moment the Unpaywall record for this DOI doesn't have any OA version, so this was probably a DOI match on this Dissemin record which is also an exact title match.
In general, Unpaywall is the best source there is. It's even used by Scopus and all the others nowadays. They have regular automatic and manual quality assurance on the links, all sorts of things. There are some bugs sometimes, usually produced by some new bug in one of their sources, but they're usually spotted and fixed quickly. Nemo 09:04, 27 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Open access bot: doi added to citation with #oabot.

The bot however just added |doi-access=free so the summary is wrong. Matthias M. (talk) 13:44, 6 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

See above. Nemo 18:02, 6 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you.

Your edit here is much appreciated. --—Encephalon 21:28, 9 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Should respect comments on doi-access parameters

Well-behaved bots will notice that a parameter has a comment as a value, such as, oh, let's say doi-access=<!-- DO NOT ADD DOI-ACCESS=FREE BECAUSE IT BREAKS THE CITATION TEMPLATE -->, and will leave that comment alone rather than changing it to doi-access=free. In this case the comment was stale because the problem it was intended to work around has apparently been fixed: it is no longer the case that adding doi-access to citation templates that have title=none causes the template to break. Nevertheless, OAbot fails to be well-behaved in this regard: Special:Diff/1023568392. Its failure to respect this kind of comment is a bug, and should be fixed. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:06, 17 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, that's for title=none, right? I was hoping the template would be fixed, but it seems we need to give up and just skip such occurrences. As for leaving parameters with comments untouched, we rely on the behaviour of a standard library to handle the template parameters, but I'll see if I can add a rule to skip these. Nemo 08:51, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think the issue with title=none has been fixed — at least I didn't see problems after this edit. So I am not complaining about that, only about not respecting these comments as a way to disable changes. (This is, at least, a standard way to get Citation bot to not change things.) —David Eppstein (talk) 07:46, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

See Special:Diff/1025587540, where it added a link to arXiv:1102.5568, "Counting (3+1) - Avoiding permutations", on a reference to doi:10.37236/225, "Counting 1324,4231-Avoiding Permutations". They are not the same paper, as a glance at their introductions verifies. They don't even have the same authors (although their author lists overlap). —David Eppstein (talk) 18:30, 28 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, will give a look. Nemo 08:51, 29 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Incorrect doi-access=free

In Special:Diff/1027274899 the bot added |doi-access=free for an article for which only the abstract is available. Kanguole 09:20, 7 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, good catch. This journal used to be bronze OA and IA still has the publisher PDF. Nemo 17:50, 14 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

False positive

Here, OAbot marked doi:10.1515/9781614511984.1 as |doi-access=free even though it's paywalled. De Gruyter recently revamped their website so that may have to do with it, but in any case this should be fixed. Nardog (talk) 03:20, 14 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

another false positive

this edit introduces yet another doi-access= parameter to a citation to a paywalled article. Cambial foliage❧ 06:51, 14 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Unpaywall just announced they added 400k newly discovered bronze open access (gratis nonfree open access PDFs) from Elsevier. The next round of the bot run will probably add many to citations. The errors mentioned in the previous three sections have been fixed as soon as they were reported. Nemo 05:48, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is that why for the last several days some 90% of my watchlist changes have been OAbot? It is forcing me to hide bot edits in my watchlist in order to find anything else, and therefore making me miss other bot edits that might be worth checking. Is there some way to throttle this down to make it less obtrusive? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:41, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A Gift For You!

File:Amogus.png Sussy Baka
Here's a sussy baka! EzriGamer26 (talk) 17:40, 20 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Upgrade and new run

The bot has been ported to Python3 (at last) and is now processing a backlog of changes, mostly based on suggestions cached from Unpaywall in January 2023. Afterwards I hope to resume a weekly processing schedule. Nemo 16:40, 28 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

503

I keep getting a "503 Service Temporarily Unavailable" message. Has the bot's address on toolforge changed? 73.44.31.228 (talk) 01:00, 16 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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