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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Lightlowemon (talk | contribs) at 05:14, 1 August 2023 (→‎Untitled_new_bug: new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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

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

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Edit to Pokémon

Dear Smith609,

Your Citation bot recently edited Pokémon (on the suggestion of User:Abductive). Many of the changes it made were good, but I had to revert four things. The bot changed these two sources to "Cite news" and "Cite magazine", respectively:

If you open the first link, you'll see that it's from a weblog. ProQuest doesn't state that the article ever appeared in print. If you open the second link, and search for "online exclusive", you'll see that the article didn't appear in the physical Time magazine. Thus, the right template for both sources would be Cite web, not Cite news or Cite magazine.

There is also this source:

The bot changed it from Cite web to Cite magazine. However, I don't have that issue. I can't tell if the web article I cited is also verbatim in the magazine.

Furthermore, the bot changed this:

to this:

The old link works with me, the new one doesn't. Don't ask me why. 😏

All these issues are understandable, but I still thought it was worth bringing them to your attention.

Cheers, Manifestation (talk) 10:53, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Why is Citation bot reinstating the changes I reverted? I hope I don't get into a revert fight with a bot! 😩 - Manifestation (talk) 10:51, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The Google Books clean-up trims them to the shortest URL that gives the same result for everyone. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:42, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm... this is really strange. I just opened the new Google Books url on my Android Chrome, and the browser showed a blank page. But then I opened the link again, and it worked fine! 🤔 This must be a bug in Google Books, which means it has nothing to do with Citation bot. However, the rest of my comment still stands. - Manifestation (talk) 13:23, 11 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@AManWithNoPlan: I just specifically excluded the Time and Washington Post sources. Did I do good?
Also, this may be an unreasonable thing to ask, but could the Citation bot interface with ProQuest? For example, here is the metadata of the Washington Post article I mentioned. The "Source type" parameter reads "Blog, Podcast, or Website" and the "Document type" parameter reads "Blogs", i.e. it's a Cite web source. Cheers, Manifestation (talk) 18:23, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
ProQuest has proven to be impossible to access at this. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:16, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
{{cite news}} is not just for papers, but also for online news sources. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:26, 18 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What proquest thinks it is, it not relevant. The article was sent out as news to a large variety of newpapers similar to the AP Wire. As the docs say "Cite news is used to create citations for news articles in print, video, audio or web." and "cite web is used to create citations for web sources that are not characterized by another CS1 template." AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:11, 19 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Expand non-templated refs

Would it be possible to expand from non-templated reference <ref>[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5553785/ Bar]</ref>, as long as |title= would be exactly the same (Bar) which already exists for the URL specified as if the bot would try to expand the bare URL (as long as there is no other content in the ref)? Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 17:16, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Example here, I had to remove the brackets and the already provided title prior to running the bot. The outcome provided the exact same title as was already present prior to me doing the removal, causing a lot of manual labor in order to get the bot to attempt to expand the citation. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 17:19, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Misc

Status
new bug
Reported by
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:07, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
This (despite some good changes in it) was doubly unhelpful. In the The Workshop citation, it replaced a citation to a specific page with just the page-range of the entire article. In the ResearchGate cite, it replaced a link to an exact page in the actual PDF document with a near-useless link to the abstract of the entire paper. Not the first questionable thing the bot's done at this article.
E.g. here, it again replaced an intentionally specific |page=16 with a whole-article span of |pages=16–20. In the same pass, it replaced this link with this one, which was silly because the latter just redirects to the former; same story with replacing this with this, other than the &gbpv=0 in the former was not necessary. And again with changing this to this, other than the former's trailing &gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover was unnecessary. Two other similar pointless changes of this sort in the same edit (though it also made some more sensible GBooks-related tweaks in other places).
This edit was also weird, since |year= is deprecated in favor of |date= except for a specific use case. (But it was an older edit, and maybe the bot doesn't do that any more.)
Finally, there does not appear to be any utility whatsoever in changing |work= to |journal= or |magazine= (or |newspaper=, or ...), since they're all aliases for the same parameter, and all this change does is make the code longer for no practical purpose (for either readers or editors). Plus it impedes easily changing the citation template when the wrong one has been used for the source type in question.
Feel free to refactor this as needed for your work flow, e.g. into separate trouble tickets or whatever.
Lest this sound like nothing but spleen-venting, I do appreciate the legit cleanup and citation-completion work this bot does.
What should happen
Implicit in the above material.
Relevant diffs/links
Diffs are included above.
Replication instructions
Unknown; just reporting what I'm seeing.
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


When did |year= get discouraged. That is a new one. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:27, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding |page=16, you should use |at=p. 16. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 13:30, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No. From the documentation: "at: For sources where a page number is inappropriate or insufficient."
When a cs1|2 template specifies a specific page in |page=, the bot should not replace that with the article page range; don't make readers search through an entire article looking for the single sentence that supports the wikitext in our article.
|date= recommended over |year= since this documentation template edit 19 April 2015. |year= discouraged since this documentation template edit 18 November 2020.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:53, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The doc is wrong. If all you use is a year, put it in a |year=. As for journals, the page range is the standard way to cite them, rather than the first page only. This here is a bit special in that the first page of a journal article was meant, but you can easily change |pages=33–36 to |pages=33–36 [33] in that case. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:16, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
See Template:Cite journal#Date: "year: Year of source being referenced. The usage of this parameter is discouraged; use the more flexible |date= parameter instead unless both of the following conditions are met: 1. The |date= format is YYYY-MM-DD. 2. The citation requires a CITEREF disambiguator." The doc is not wrong, and these changes were made years ago and have largely propagated site-wide. I have made literally thousands and thousands of changes of deprecated |year= to |date= and not one single time has anyone raised an objection, because they follow the documentation and (if they have questions) investigate the discussions that led to the documentation. It is not a legitimate job of any bot to defy consensus-built template operation and robotically abuse the template parameters; the tail does not wag the dog, and a bot's approval to operate is conditional on it doing things that are supported by consensus. If you want to change the CS1/CS2 documentation, you can make a proposal at WT:CS1. That also applies to the next bit.
Page numbers: See the detailed documentation under Template:Cite journal#Description: "page: The number of a single page in the source that supports the content. ... OR: pages: a range of pages inthe source that supports the content". The parameter can also be used to indicate the full-page range of the source, for short sources like journal citations, but there are specific instructions for including this information if for some reason it is desired: "using the following notation: article-page-range [content-supporting-pages], for example: pp. 4–10 [5, 7]". The primary reader- and editor-facing purpose of citing pages at all is to cite the content-supporting material, and the vast majority of our citations are written this way. It's "reader-hateful" to change these into ranges that cover the entire cited work, unless you use the prescribed "pp. 4–10 [5, 7]" format, but there are so vanishingly few citations actually written this way (because they are not actually useful to either the reader or to editors doing verification) that people are apt to revert this anyay. Citing only the full page range, rather than specific content-supporting pages, of journal articles is absolutely not "the standard way to cite them" on Wikipedia, however commonly the practice can be found in the academic world (and even there, it's only a peculiarity of certain citation styles; I read a lot of journal material, and plenty of it cites specific pages in other articles).
More: Wikipedia:Citing sources#Short and full citations: "A full citation fully identifies a reliable source and, where applicable, the place in that source (such as a page number) where the information in question can be found. .... A short citation is an inline citation that identifies the place in a source where specific information can be found ... giving summary information about the source together with a page number." This applies to all publication types; there is no magical exception for journals. WP:Citing sources#Identifying parts of a source: "When citing lengthy sources, you should identify which part of a source is being cited." That applies to all journal articles that are not trivially short. Next, Help:References and page numbers: "give a page number or page range—or a section, chapter, or other division of the source—because then the reader does not have to carefully review the whole cited source to find the relevant supporting evidence". Next, Wikipedia:References dos and don'ts: "DO: ... Say where in the source the information came from."
On mis-using |at= to provide page numbers, Trappist above is correct that this is not what that parameter is for. See also Help:References and page numbers#Other in-source locations: "Often, a page number is not appropriate such as when citing an audio or video source or a book that has no page numbers. The Citation Style 1 [and CS2 for that matter] templates have an |at= parameter that can be used to include non-page locators."
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:18, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think Headbomb is saying, if the page # is the first page, it's probable the editor didn't want to look up the last page # (or didn't have full access to find it) so they simply cite the first page number only. There is a chance the citation is actually for the first page, but statistically speaking it probably does less damage to cite the full range then first page only. Anyway, if the citation is for the first page and it has the full range, presumably the reader will start with the first page anyway. -- GreenC 04:31, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Generally, the bot only changing pages, when the the page number is the first and only first page. Otherwise it will assume there is a reason for the single page number. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:59, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Generally speaking, one should avoid directly linking to RG PDF files, since RG limits the number of downloads of PDFs, these links add to that count. Secondly, the PDFs are much less accessible than the abstract pages. Lastly, one can always just click on the PDF link. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:56, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I can buy that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:18, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The GB normalizations greatly stabilize URLs and make what different people see more consistent and removes javascript dependencies. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:58, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'll also take your word for it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:18, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

PLoS → PLOS for publications prior to 2012

Status
new bug
Reported by
Leyo 12:25, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
PloS One was replaced by PLOS ONE in a citation of a 2009 publication, even though the publisher PLOS and the associated journals were only renamed in 2012
What should happen
PloS should be kept for publications prior to 2012
Relevant diffs/links
Special:Diff/1167057982
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


PloS was never used, only PLoS and PLOS, and the difference in capitalization isn't worth preserving. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:30, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I see that the "L" was not capitalized in this example, either. However, "PLoS ..." should undoubtedly be preserved in publications prior to 2012 as this was the name of the journal at that time. --Leyo 09:03, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The name didn't change, they changed how they styled it. We are not obligated to follow style. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:12, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's not just style. See e.g. in this 2009 paper: Citation: vanEngelsdorp D, Evans JD, Saegerman C, Mullin C, Haubruge E, et al. (2009) Colony Collapse Disorder: A Descriptive Study. PLoS ONE 4(8): e6481. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006481 --Leyo 09:20, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's exactly what style is. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:28, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, style would be e.g. "PLOS" or "PLOS". We wouldn't consider this in WP article citations.
In any way, as stated, "PLoS …" should undoubtedly be preserved for publications prior to 2012. --Leyo 11:24, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The journal says to cite using PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/citation?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0000001 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:20, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No idea why their script output is like that. Lazy coding?
In the PDF version of this paper, it says 
Citation: Almeida MC, Steiner AA, Branco LGS, Romanovsky AA (2006) Neural Substrate of Cold-Seeking Behavior in Endotoxin Shock. PLoS ONE 1(1): e1. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000001
--Leyo 14:33, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Not lazy encoding but a deliberate choice on their part. They want everyone to embrace their new identity. Similar to you reference a person with their new identity ("Oh, I knew Jane Smith back in high school", even though she was "Jane Brown", since she was not married yet). Similar to how one uses "she" for Jenner even for back when Jenner was on the men's olympics team. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:28, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Edit to "List of F5 and EF5 tornadoes"

Status
new bug
Reported by
User-duck (talk) 07:00, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
[1]
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


I do not see a method were a bot can get information from scanned image or a web page where url-access=subscription.

List of F5 and EF5 tornadoes: "Bangor Daily Whig and Courier Archives, May 18, 1896, p. 1" obviously is not the title of a newspaper article published May 18, 1896. I know supplying a title results in one less "missing title" message, but is that really the goal of article edits? User-duck (talk) 07:00, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support for Who's Who

Status
new bug
Reported by
Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 01:06, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What should happen
Implement support to expand from https://doi.org/10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U192476 to {{Who's Who}}
Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Friern_Hospital&diff=prev&oldid=1167644213
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


Alternatively, deny all edits on 10.1093/ww/... doi's. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 01:06, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Or perhaps the entire 10.1093-prefix of doi's since we don't have support for {{cite ODNB}} either (example). Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 21:11, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sr.wiki

Hi, again. Can you run your bot through sr.wiki? There are too many articles with partially filled citation templates. An by the way, why does bot remove ref=harv? KrleNS (talk) 03:40, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

ref=harv is the default for newer template versions. On en and simple, ref=harv generates a warning message. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:20, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
See Template:HarvErrors for the longer explanation. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:48, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
But without ref=harv or something like that, harv and sfn template don't jump to source in cite book or journal templates. --KrleNS (talk) 01:07, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Did you read Template:HarvErrors? Because you're about 3 years out of date here (on enwiki). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:08, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To be honest, just cursory, didn't find where to look. Is there any chance of running Citation bot at sr.wiki? I manually run the bot for almost a month, I am fed up with cleaning after google-translate editors KrleNS (talk) 03:14, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
lastautamp etc also have changed. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:29, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I forgot to ask: is this bot manually operated or run via terminal? --KrleNS (talk) 02:04, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Some of both. Usually Wiki Kubwernetis cluster as directed by users. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 02:38, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Untitled_new_bug

Status
new bug
Reported by
Lightlowemon (talk) 05:14, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
What happens
Bot semi duplicated a reference that was in the volume parameter
Relevant diffs/links
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Enzyme_multiplied_immunoassay_technique&diff=prev&oldid=1168056552
We can't proceed until
Feedback from maintainers


I'm not sure if having the supplement in the issue value is correct or not, but it seemed weird that the bot added in the parameter without removing it from the volume name, this could potentially be a GIGO scenario, not certain though. --Lightlowemon (talk) 05:14, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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