User talk:Citation bot

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.

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Feature requests

1. 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
2. Implement support to convert cite web to {{BioRef}} and {{GBIF}}
3. Use https://www.crossref.org/blog/news-crossref-and-retraction-watch/
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25497/ set NLM_APIKEY and NLM_EMAIL
5. journal/publisher that only differ by 'and' and '&' should be treated as identical https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Congenital_cartilaginous_rest_of_the_neck&diff=prev&oldid=1199200383
6. Free archive.org links such as curl -sH "Accept: application/json" "https://scholar.archive.org/search?q=doi:10.1080/14786449908621245" | jq -r .results[0].fulltext.access_url
7. Use GET instead of POST for better proxy caches when talking to data-bases when possible.
8. Start to convert Google Books URL to "new" format https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/m8W2AgAAQBAJ?gbpv=1&pg=PA379
9. When encountering a {{cite journal}} or {{citation}} with |journal=bioRxiv or |journal=bioRxiv: The Preprint Server for Biology [case insensitive], the bot should convert the citation to a proper {{cite bioRxiv}}, i.e.
   • {{cite journal |last1=Larivière |first1=Vincent |last2=Kiermer |first2=Véronique |last3=MacCallum |first3=Catriona J. |last4=McNutt |first4=Marcia |last5=Patterson |first5=Mark |last6=Pulverer |first6=Bernd |last7=Swaminathan |first7=Sowmya |last8=Taylor |first8=Stuart |last9=Curry |first9=Stephen |date=2016-07-05 |title=A simple proposal for the publication of journal citation distributions |journal=bioRxiv |page=062109 |url=http://biorxiv.org/lookup/doi/10.1101/062109 |language=en |doi=10.1101/062109 |hdl=1866/23301 |s2cid=64293941 |hdl-access=free}}
   • Larivière, Vincent; Kiermer, Véronique; MacCallum, Catriona J.; McNutt, Marcia; Patterson, Mark; Pulverer, Bernd; Swaminathan, Sowmya; Taylor, Stuart; Curry, Stephen (2016-07-05). "A simple proposal for the publication of journal citation distributions". bioRxiv: 062109. doi:10.1101/062109. hdl:1866/23301. S2CID 64293941.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: article number as page number (link)
   • The bot should keep |author/last/first/date/year/title/language=, convert |doi= to |biorxiv=, and throw the rest away.
   • {{cite bioRxiv |last1=Larivière |first1=Vincent |last2=Kiermer |first2=Véronique |last3=MacCallum |first3=Catriona J. |last4=McNutt |first4=Marcia |last5=Patterson |first5=Mark |last6=Pulverer |first6=Bernd |last7=Swaminathan |first7=Sowmya |last8=Taylor |first8=Stuart |last9=Curry |first9=Stephen |date=2016-07-05 |title=A simple proposal for the publication of journal citation distributions |language=en |biorxiv=10.1101/062109}}
   • Larivière, Vincent; Kiermer, Véronique; MacCallum, Catriona J.; McNutt, Marcia; Patterson, Mark; Pulverer, Bernd; Swaminathan, Sowmya; Taylor, Stuart; Curry, Stephen (2016-07-05). "A simple proposal for the publication of journal citation distributions". bioRxiv 10.1101/062109.
   • If it was from a {{citation}}, append |mode=cs2 to it.
   • To be extra safe, this should only be done when the DOI starts with 10.1101. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 08:20, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
   • Same for with |journal=medRxiv or |journal=medRxiv: The Preprint Server for Health Sciences [case insensitive] and convertions to {{cite medrxiv}}
10. If encountering a {{cite bioRxiv}} that is fully published, convert it to a {{cite journal}}
    • Wolf, Luise; Silander, Olin K.; Van Nimwegen, Erik J. (2014). "Expression noise facilitates the evolution of gene regulation". bioRxiv 10.1101/007237. says "Now published in eLife doi: 10.7554/eLife.05856"
    • So TNT the citation
    • {{cite journal |biorxiv=10.1101/007237 |doi=10.7554/eLife.05856}}
    • and expand it
    • Wolf, Luise; Silander, Olin K.; Van Nimwegen, Erik (2015). "Expression noise facilitates the evolution of gene regulation". eLife. 4: e05856. bioRxiv 10.1101/007237. doi:10.7554/eLife.05856. PMC 4468965. PMID 26080931.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: article number as page number (link)
    • New DOI is in crossref. https://api.crossref.org/works/10.1101/007237
    • Same for {{cite medRxiv}} to {{cite journal}}
11. When working multiple articles at once, such as via the web interface on a category or linked page, include the category name or linked page one the final output report.

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

URL removed

Status

new bug

Reported by

Mika1h (talk) 10:57, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

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)

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)

CITEVAR and manually formatted references

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)

There's already citation templates on that page. No CITEVAR violation happened. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:09, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

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)

It should however, preserve the editors. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:11, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

STILL creating new CS1 errors

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

STILL HAPPENING: Special:Diff/1282071056. I swear the bulk of the newly reported CS1 errors that I find on the bambots cleanup listings such as [2] are caused by Citation bot. It is extremely frustrating that the bot is creating reference cleanup work for others rather than preventing others from having to do that work, month after month and year after year, with no hint that the damage will stop. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:05, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

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

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 21:20, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

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

Status

new bug

Reported by

Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 19:56, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

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)

specific issues fixed. some special code for parentheses does need added AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:30, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Note to self. Look at UCFIRST_JOURNAL_ACRONYMS in expandFns.php. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:48, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

An additional thing which should be "fixed": No need to capitalize"and" after "U.S." (see my fix [3]) Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 13:59, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

author/first --> last/first

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:21, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

What should happen

[4]

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)

web vs book

Status

new bug

Reported by

🌿MtBotany (talk) 02:07, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

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)

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)

Gradually garbled

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)

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)

In my experience, conflated citations to the same content published in multiple sources are some of the most time-consuming to tease apart (I usually repair by providing both publications to prevent future garbling, with the second one prepended with "Republished as" or similar).

Hard to believe edits like Special:Diff/1251661460 are still happening. I guess it must not be possible to program Citation bot to look at the parameters specified in the citation it's editing to ensure they're all supported by the template type it thinks should be used instead.

I would also appreciate it if Citation bot could decline activation at articles it has edited within the past week or so, to give watchlisters a break from reviewing and/or encourage activators to try filling out citations unassisted. (It would also be nice if it didn't revert people reverting it, but that certainly wouldn't be worth the overhead). Folly Mox (talk) 16:40, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Amazon link bug

Even when used as a reliable source for basic information for a work such as release date et al, Amazon pages tend to be erroneously converted (Special:Diff/1263465110, Special:Diff/1265696226) into the ref for the associated work. ミラP@Miraclepine 16:34, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Replace hardcoded nbsp with space

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:16, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

What should happen

[5]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

The bot stays away from the |quote= since it is often formatted by people for some specific reason. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:15, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

@AManWithNoPlan: Then they should use an explicit   to indicate intention if that's ever the case. Same for the other hardcoded special whitespace like thinspaces. Everything not explicitely coded should be convert to a plain space. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:05, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

Converts conference citation to journal citation and changes title case

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 09:01, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Special:Diff/1268341479

What should happen

In this specific case, the conversion to a more recent and more complete version of the paper happens to be acceptable. The bot got lucky. But in other cases, there might have been a reason to continue citing the conference version of a paper, even one with the same arxiv preprint number as a later journal version, and this conversion would be unsafe. The change from sentence case to title case, for a journal paper, is an unwanted style change, inconsistent with the use of sentence case for other journal papers referenced in this article.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

COSMETICBOT changing names for author parameters with no actual effect

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 19:16, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Special:Diff/1269593606 changes last=, first=, and author-link= (on a multi-author publication) to last1=, first1=, and author-link1=. In this context, these parameters are synonyms so the change makes no effect to the rendered citation.

What should happen

Not that per WP:COSMETICBOT

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)

Work duplicates publisher

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 23:24, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

What happens

In Special:Diff/1269671741 it added work= to a cite web that already had a publisher= with substantially the same text, the name of the organization whose web site was cited. Regardless of whether we should prefer having a citation that names the web site or that names the organization that owns the web site, it is not useful to repeat the same text twice.

What should happen

Not that.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Publisher replaced with Work

Status

new bug

Reported by

Ms7821 (talk) 23:18, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Bot incorrectly replaces Publisher with Work in web cite

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=What3words&diff=prev&oldid=1268372893

Replication instructions

I've no idea, why is this bot making unguided changes?

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Half-assed conversion of cite web to cite journal

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 17:53, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Special:Diff/1271282424

What should happen

Either properly convert it to a publication type for a periodical (although calling the periodical, ORMS Today, a journal, is a stretch; it is a newsletter or magazine), or leave it alone; don't leave it in a broken half-converted state.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Bot should verify fields

In this edit bot changed |archive-link= to |archive-url=. But the |archive-link= field was populated with wrong info, yet bot done that edit.––kemel49^{(connect)(contri)} 15:29, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Agree it's probably best not to alter a parameter name to |some-url= if it doesn't contain a url. The affected template was already throwing a single error (unsupported parameter) due to the existing typo, and this increased the errors to two. Folly Mox (talk) 15:48, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Bot could simply avoid such fields as they need a human hand.––kemel49^{(connect)(contri)} 16:57, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

The bot maintains a list of 'common typos and parameters that changed names', and this is one of them. I will think about how to best handle GIGO of this style. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:11, 1 February 2025 (UTC)

IAU Circular / CBET volume/issue/page

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:06, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

What should happen

[6], more or less

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

IAU Circular/IAU Circ./IAU Circ and Central Bureau Electronic Telegrams/Cent. Bur. Electron. Telegr./Cent Bur Electron Telegr/CBET have issues, not volumes. The # is the article number/page. This can be parsed directly from the bibcode when present. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:06, 4 February 2025 (UTC)

Citation bot removes "|chapter=" when "|trans-chapter=" exists, resulting in CS1 error

Status

new bug

Reported by

Alexanderino (talk) 00:23, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

What happens

The bot removes the "|chapter=" parameter. This is mandatory when "|trans-chapter=" exists. If it's not present, a CS1 error ({{cite book}}: |trans-chapter= requires |chapter= or |script-chapter=) appears.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joseph_Carr%C3%A8re&diff=1274311669&oldid=1273954857

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Alexanderino, you had the |chapter= parameter duplicating the |title= parameter in this citation (which I fixed here). Agree that the check for requisite additional parameters should happen before removing duplicate parameters so as to avoid this sort of error, but it's always a slog to capture all the potential GIGO cases.

Incidentally, the three cites in that section to L'auto should have been calling {{cite periodical}} or {{cite news}} instead of {{cite book}}. I fixed that here, additionally specifying issue dates and page numbers so the references can still be verified if the Gallica url stops working. Can you check the other citations to ensure the full information is included? Folly Mox (talk) 12:25, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your clarification and help. I will take a look once I've had some sleep. Alexanderino (talk) 12:31, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

Series: Current Topics in Behavioral Neuroscience / Curr. Top. Behav. Neurosci. / Curr Top Behav Neurosci

Status

more to do

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:45, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

What should happen

[7]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Not quite fixed, still need to do follow up cleanup, e.g. [8]. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:28, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

that's will take some time. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 02:09, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

Cosmetic?

Status

new bug

Reported by

Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:51, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

What happens

this edit

What should happen

No edit should be made, per WP:COSMETICBOT; this is a cosmetic edit. See this discussion of the edit.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Also cosmetic [9]. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 07:18, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

Wrongful convertion of publisher to work

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:14, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

What happens

[10]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Cite book to cite web conversion breaks citation by failing to migrate title=/work= to chapter=/title=

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 18:16, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

What happens

When it converts cite web to cite book (the correct choice), but with a cite web whose title= and work= are respectively the chapter title and book title, it leaves those parameters as they are. This produces an incorrect citation (showing the chapter title as the book title and not showing the book title) and produces a citation template error (because work= is not recognized as a valid parameter for cite book).

What should happen

The title=/work= pair should be migrated to chapter=/title=

Relevant diffs/links

Special:Diff/1277560761 (which actually should be cite conference, but that wouldn't make a difference here).

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Incidentally (see previous section) this is another instance where User:Dominic3203 ran the bot but then failed to check that its results were good. Dominic3203, you need to take responsibility for bot edits that you initiate. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:55, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

@David Eppstein Yeah yeah I know… I have reduced my time using this bot, because I have so much to do in real time. Rather than spending hours here, now it is better for the "experts" to hunt down errors. Time will tell. Dominic3203 (talk) 01:20, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

I have been going through Category:CS1 errors: periodical ignored, and I've seen a lot of {{cite book}} examples with title/work pairs that should be chapter/title. I don't know if they all originated as {{cite web}}, but I wouldn't be surprised if many of them did. It would be nice to know that a bot isn't out there making more problems to fix. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 00:36, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

Converts badly-formatted book review into worse-formatted mishmash of the book and its review

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 07:55, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Special:Diff/1276511503

What should happen

Special:Diff/1278238470. But if the bot is not smart enough to do something like that, it should recognize its limitations and not make citations worse.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Adds |work= to cite book

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 18:28, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Special:Diff/1277560539

What should happen

Not that; work= is unrecognized as a parameter for cite book. The added "work" is the imprint under which the book in question was published; we don't have a citation parameter for imprints (separate from the publisher, which was already listed). The deadlink url in the citation is merely the publisher's page describing their book. Another bad edit suggested by User:Dominic3203 and not properly checked.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

I will debug this once Zotero is working again. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:19, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Adds redundant work= to cite web where the work is the same as the publisher, already listed

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 18:35, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Special:Diff/1278922247

What should happen

Not that. There's no point in listing the same organization twice, once as work and once as publisher. The more important metadatum here is the publisher; if their web site has no other name then we should omit it and not have a work= parameter set at all.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

work duplicates publisher and location fields

Status

new bug

Reported by

 Stepho  talk  05:00, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Ref has existing fields like publisher=Toyota location=UK and bot adds work=Toyota UK . Ref now contains "Toyota UK. UK: Toyota."

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Toyota_Supra&diff=1279154497&oldid=1276547358

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Far too aggressive in using hidden web page metadata

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 05:17, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Special:Diff/1282393116

What should happen

This is a typical example of recent Citation bot edits, overriding web citation content with metadata from the html headers of the web page. The bot is far too trusting that this metadata reflects the actual date and authorship of the page in question. Sometimes it might, sometimes it might not, and in this case it does not. The bot added work=EATCS to a citation that already had EATCS in the (more correct) publisher field; this is wrong, because EATCS is the (abbreviated) name of an organization, not the name of the web site of the organization, but only mildly wrong. Worse is that it believed the web page metadata in listing Efi Chita as author of the web page. It is probably accurate that Efi Chita formatted the text as a web page and posted it as a web page. They are not the author of the text in question, as should be obvious to any human who looks at the page and puts some thought into it. It is a laudatio for a prize, written most likely by the chair of the prize committee but maybe with some joint authorship by the other committee members. Efi Chita is not a committee member. They are an information technology specialist at a Greek publishing company, presumably a company contracted by EATCS to run the web site. They should not be credited as an author of the content merely for being the one to post it to the web. The bot cannot tell the difference so it should not be making this kind of edit.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Don't add work to template:cite book

In an edit, Citation bot modified a citation to the book chapter "Making Time: Conservation of Biological Clocks from Fungi to Animals". The chapter is reprinted (and possibly updated) from an initial publication in the journal Microbiology Spectrum. Some of the changes are fine (|pmid=28527179 |pmc=5446046). The changes that treat {{cite book}} as {{cite journal}} create error messages and add parameters that won't be displayed (|journal=Microbiology Spectrum |volume=5 |issue=3). It also adds the bogus parameter "|pages=10.1128/microbiolspec.FUNK–0039–2016".

When editing {{cite book}}, the bot should not add |work= or its aliases like |journal=. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 14:18, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Note Invisible breaking spaces

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:41, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

What should happen

[11]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

This function should apply accross all namespaces if it doesn't already. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:41, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Uses bogus isbn parameter as an excuse to bork entire cite journal reference

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 16:57, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Special:Diff/1285450909

What should happen

Not that. At most, the isbn should be removed.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

That is interesting. The bad data is from the DOI. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:01, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/3527608958.ch7
https://api.crossref.org/works/10.1002/3527608958.ch7
AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:03, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

The doi is from a reprint of the journal version and not from the cited journal version itself. This is a common problem where a good reference gets contaminated by a little bit of metadata for a related reference (a reprint or review) and the bot uses this small contamination as an excuse to blow it up into bigger problems. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:42, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

Lecture Notes in Mathematics is a book series not a title

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 18:34, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

What happens

In Special:Diff/1288138202 the bot removed the correct title and series of a book in the series Lecture Notes in Mathematics and replaced the title with the name of the series. Another bad edit under the responsibility of User:Dominic3203.

What should happen

Not that.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Book review confusion

Hi, new here, not sure if this is the right place, but this looks like the same problem (or a very similar one): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fundamental_theorem_of_calculus&diff=prev&oldid=1288133688 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.121.180.24 (talk • contribs) 20:19, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

No, that is the bot confusing a book review with the book under review and garbaging a citation to a book by mashing it up with metadata from the book review. It is a severe bug but not the same bug. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:46, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

I can't think of a good way to distinguish between review and original work, given some review have all the same metadata that the original work has. In some cases, the review is in fact what is being cited. If possible, I would recommend raising a red flag to signal more careful human review is needed in some cases, such as when the word "review" (or in this case "Books Received") is found on the destination page or perhaps in certain database fields. This red flag might be raised gratuitously in the case of say, literature reviews, but hopefully not enough to produce alert fatigue. -- Beland (talk) 22:07, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Messed up book citation with title and chapter

Status

new bug

Reported by

Jay8g [V•T•E] 18:53, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

What happens

[12] - I have no idea what happened here. It took a seemingly normal book citation with title and chapter parameters and renamed the title parameter to chapter, then removed the chapter name, leaving it with no title parameter.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Seems due to bad metadata. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:37, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Adds work=The Library of Congress to a cite book

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 06:15, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Special:Diff/1285694635

What should happen

Not that. The url is a web page where a copy of this book can be found and the name of the web site is not a part of the name of the book. Also, work= is never a valid parameter for cite book and should never be added to cite book.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Artistdirect duplication

Status

New bug

Reported by

SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 12:30, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

What happens

The title of Artistdirect needlessly gets added when already present in a citation, with the new mention dubiously having italics and an upper-case stylization for some letters after the beginning "A"

Relevant diffs/links

[13]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Added to previously correct title

Status

new bug

Reported by

Jay8g [V•T•E] 19:29, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

What happens

[14]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Previous title did contain an error, but new one was worse. This comes from Archive title code. Will look at. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 10:59, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Once we can migrate to PHP 8.4, this will get MUCH better. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:58, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

Unnecessary parameter

Status

new bug

Reported by

– Demetrios1993 (talk) 06:45, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

What happens

The bot added |work= with the value "The British Museum"; whereas "British Museum" is already included as a value in |publisher=.

What should happen

The |work= should be omitted when its value is substantially the same as the value of the |publisher=; see Template:Cite web § Publisher.

Relevant diffs/links

Diff1, diff2

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Internationalization - VI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hide_on_Ros%C3%A9 requested https://vi.wikipedia.org/ AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:22, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

it needs to be approved on vi.wiki probably https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bot

localization will be needed, unless they use the english cite templates unmodified.

locatization of the edit summary will be needed - see https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/blob/master/constants/translations.php

AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:29, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

Will do the localization part now. Phạm Ngọc Phương Linh (T • C • CA • L • B) 09:38, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

CC @Chó Vàng Hài Hước. Phạm Ngọc Phương Linh (T • C • CA • L • B) 09:54, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

See PR 4803. Phạm Ngọc Phương Linh (T • C • CA • L • B) 10:06, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Please check VI_ERR1 and VI_ERR2 in [15]. We have moved all translated text into that file. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:11, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Updated, see #4804. Phạm Ngọc Phương Linh (T • C • CA • L • B) 13:19, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

It looks like we need an account. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth?target=Citation+bot I will reach out to the bot master. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:25, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Now created. Please ping me and CVHH if anything needs attention, or for bot approval part. Phạm Ngọc Phương Linh (T • C • CA • L • B) 14:01, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Working on template mappings, since VI likes to use non-standard template names (Those are translated). AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:38, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

@AManWithNoPlan It still remains the original (English) parameters. Phạm Ngọc Phương Linh (T • C • CA • L • B) 18:13, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

not the parameters, but the template names. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:15, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Working on stopping this: https://vi.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Watchmen&diff=prev&oldid=73703896 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:42, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

Does the bot read the localized parameters? I see it change vi parameters to en. Phạm Ngọc Phương Linh (T • C • CA • L • B) 03:03, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

The bot has no idea about the localization parameters, other than it has code to de-localize parameters on en.wiki when people copy refs to en.wiki AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:18, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

And modifying the bot to use localization paramters will be a long and tedious process. The set/unset/get functions would have to be modified to internally maps from the english parameters to the local ones. The harder part are the parts of the code that directly change variables and do not use the get/set/unset functions. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:30, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

It might be simpler to convert everything when the template is read-in and then covert back when done processing. Although cleaning up the code that directly changes variables is probably a good idea long-term. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:33, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

How about w:vi:Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist? Phạm Ngọc Phương Linh (T • C • CA • L • B) 12:36, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

The bot would need a list of mappings and not just a list of valid parameters. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:42, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

See vi:Mô đun:Citation/CS1/Configuration Phạm Ngọc Phương Linh (T • C • CA • L • B) 03:34, 24 July 2025 (UTC)

This might take a long time, but I will work on it over time. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:44, 24 July 2025 (UTC)

Serbian Wikipedia

Hi. Can/Would You run your bot on sr.wiki? I do this, but it is Herculean/Sisyphean task for me. I need help to clean CS1 errors: missing title. And it would be good if you can once per year run trough entire sr.wiki. Please. KrleNS (talk) 03:07, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

? KrleNS (talk) 20:08, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

it needs to be approved on sr.wiki probably https://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A8%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%BD:Bots

localization will be needed, unless they the english cite templates unmodified.

locatization of the edit summary will be needed - see https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/blob/master/constants/translations.php

AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:28, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. We use en.wiki cite templates. I will help with localisation. But who will ask for aproval? Previous requests were submited here KrleNS (talk) 19:51, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

const SR_TRANS = [

   'Altered' => 'Промењен',
   'Alter:' => 'Промени:',
   'URLs might have been anonymized. ' => 'УРЛ адресе су можда анонимизиране. ',
   'Added' => 'Додано',
   'Add:' => 'Додај:',
   'Removed or converted URL. ' => 'Уклоњен или конвертован URL. ',
   'Removed URL that duplicated identifier. ' => 'Уклоњен URL који је дуплирао идентификатор. ',
   'Removed access-date with no URL. ' => 'Уклоњен датум приступа без URL. ',
   'Changed bare reference to CS1/2. ' => 'Промењене гола референце на CS1/2. ',
   'Removed parameters. ' => 'Уклоњени параметри. ',
   'Some additions/deletions were parameter name changes. ' => 'Неке допуне/брисања без промене имена параметра. ',
   'Upgrade ISBN10 to 13. ' => 'Надограђен ISBN10 на ISBN13. ',
   'Removed Template redirect. ' => 'Уклоњено преусмерење шаблона. ',
   'Misc citation tidying. ' => 'Различита сређивања навода. ',
   'Use this bot]].' => 'Користи овог бота]].',
   '|Report bugs]]' => '|Пријави грешку]]',
   'Formatted ' => 'Форматиран ',
   'Suggested by' => 'Предложено од',
   'Linked from' => 'Повезано од',
   '[[Category:' =>'[[Категорија:',

]; --KrleNS (talk) 19:56, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

https://sr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D0%90%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2_%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BC&diff=30163366&oldid=29962318 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:35, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

I forgot that these need translated. They are rare error messages, so I used google. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:36, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

$err1 = 'Следећи текст би вам могао помоћи да схватите где је грешка на страници (потражите усамљене знакове { и } или незатворени коментар).';
$err2 = 'Ако то није проблем, онда покрените једну страницу са додатком &prce=1 у URL да бисте променили механизам за парсирање';

Thanks. I don't see any problem with the test edit. --KrleNS (talk) 21:46, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

Hello. I noticed that Citation bot hasn't been run on sr.wiki since then, nor request for bot flag has been submitted. Btw, the bot doesn't add title= when there is trans-title=, even if there ISBN/DOI/PMID/PMC/Google Books/InternetArchive link. An example--KrleNS (talk) 04:42, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

? KrleNS (talk) 19:02, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

Pointless whitespace-only edit

Status

new bug

Reported by

Jay8g [V•T•E] 01:53, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Not sure what happened here, but the bot should not make edits that just add a space character

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Same annoying and pointless cosmeticbot behavior still happening nearly a week later: Special:Diff/1301704057, Special:Diff/1301703128 —David Eppstein (talk) 07:32, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

Date related GIGO issue

Status

new bug

Reported by

––kemel49^{(connect)(contri)} 02:41, 16 July 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Bot did edit which includes invalid data format.

What should happen

Should not included hyphen before year.

Relevant diffs/links

see diff

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

work in cite book

Status

new bug

Reported by

Janhrach (talk) 16:06, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Adds |work= to {{cite book}} that includes a URL, which causes a |work= ignored error.

What should happen

May that should have been added to |website=?

Relevant diffs/links

[16]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Where did 28 April 2014 come from?

In this edit on Constitution of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, Citation_bot added the date 28 April 2014 to two (redundant) uses of an undated, unarchived blog source. Leaving aside the question of whether the blog satisfies WP:BLOG (Civiroglu.net says "Personal website of Mutlu Civiroglu" at top right, so I'm quite dubious about keeping it; some better quality sources are used in other places in the article, but cleanup is still needed), the software question is where the bot dug up the date from. This source is not ArXiv, the ADS, an academic journal publisher, or similar. I've reverted the edit. Boud (talk) 15:22, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

Added incorrect HDL

Status

new bug

Reported by

Jon Kolbert (talk) 15:46, 25 July 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Incorrect HDL added, the bot used doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1965.01720310065008 and added a HDL to a different work. I'm not sure where the HDL came from but somehow it was linked

What should happen

No HDL added at all as it is to a different work

Relevant diffs/links

Special:Diff/1302363847

Replication instructions

See this link

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Bad title: Private Site

Status

new bug

Reported by

Jay8g [V•T•E] 22:57, 31 July 2025 (UTC)

What happens

[17]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Bibcode error report

Status

new bug

Reported by

WikiHelper3906 (talk) 19:06, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Bot created bad bibcode that had to be fixed

What should happen

Bibcode created properly without any errors

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Betty_Klepper&diff=1302941443&oldid=1295798772

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

The discussion has started, let's get this over with.

As wild as it seems, this is the correct bibcode. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:33, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

Incorrect resolution of inappropriate access-date= with cite book

Status

new bug

Reported by

𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:01, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Using {{cite book}}, a previous editor wrote the citation to include a url= that gave the address of a specific single page in a book (and thus the output implied that this is the url of the whole book). They also compounded that error by giving an access-date= (which is rarely appropriate for books). I corrected the citation so that it became page=[Google books page url ending in &pg=1234 1234] but failed to delete the access-date= . Citation-bot responded by recreating the erroneous url=, again creating a the false impression that this is a url for the whole book.

What should happen

if the template is {{cite book}}, delete the access-date=, don't add an inaccurate url=

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Partition_of_Ireland&diff=1303747130&oldid=1303705396

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Umm, at this edit, you created this:

{{cite book |last1=Jackson |first1=Alvin |title=Ireland 1798–1998: War, Peace and Beyond |date=2010 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |isbn=978-1444324150 |edition=2nd |page=https://books.google.com/books?id=jzjmfa43JWkC&pg=PA239 239|access-date=18 April 2017 |archive-date=19 April 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170419013815/https://books.google.com/books?id=jzjmfa43JWkC&pg=PA239 |url-status=live }}

Jackson, Alvin (2010). Ireland 1798–1998: War, Peace and Beyond (2nd ed.). John Wiley & Sons. p. https://books.google.com/books?id=jzjmfa43JWkC&pg=PA239 239. ISBN 978-1444324150. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); |archive-url= requires |url= (help)

You not only ignored |access-date=, but you also ignored |archive-url=, |archive-date=, & |url-status=, and you left out the ext link markup at |page=. If you create a junk citation, is it any wonder that Citation bot, attempts to undo what you did?

After some more edits by you, the two citations that you touched are still broken: see ref 1 and ref 6 (both permalinks).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:23, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

So much for my quick'n'dirty "corrections". I guess I deserved the [[WP{BOOMERANG]] (so trouting self).

The archive-url and archive-date seem valid and useful, because Google may or may not make the page available at their whim.

It is not obvious to me how to resolve this?

• The url of the page is not the url of the book (which is significant for books out of copyright or available to borrow from archive.org
• Conversely it is very useful to give the url of the page in the book per "say where you found it"
• It is valuable to have archive.org capture that page url (their "fair use" litigation aside).

I guess that maybe this is not the place to debate it but is there a way to square this circle? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:50, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

If only one page or page range is being cited, I think it's fine to set url=... aimed at that specific page (or the first page in the range). This is widespread across Wikipedia, and seems more useful for readers than most alternatives. If several separate page ranges are being cited from the book, it's then more useful to put the links on each page range. If a chapter is being cited, or if the specific page is within a particular chapter, it's often more convenient to set the chapter-url. –jacobolus (t) 03:09, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

Numeric name added to citations (August 2925)

Status

new bug

Reported by

Achmad Rachmani (talk) 23:14, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

What happens

[18]

What should happen

[19], [20]

Relevant diffs/links

Iran–Israel war

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Breaks cite book to Progress in Optics

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 21:14, 2 August 2025 (UTC)

What happens

In Special:Diff/1302025425 it added a journal= to a cite book.

What should happen

Not that. The landing page for the article [21] labels the title of the cited article starting with "Chapter 2", making it obvious that this is an edited volume not a journal. More, the landing page for the volume [22] says at the top "Book series". Additionally, citation bot should never introduce new errors to citation templates. In this case, this raised an error that the periodical in a cite journal link is ignored. That is, the only effect of the bot's edit was to cause an error, not to change the visible appearance or hidden metadata of the citation at all. That should never happen. This edit was credited to User:Abductive, who should be warned to take more care and reponsibility to check the Citation bot edits they initiate and fix the problems they sometimes create.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

10.9778 are free DOIs

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:07, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

What should happen

[23]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

For CMAJ Open. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:06, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

Fix ISSN with lowercase x, not hyphen instead of hyphen

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:22, 6 August 2025 (UTC)

What should happen

[24] [25] [26]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:22, 6 August 2025 (UTC)

Should apply to everything that looks like a hyphen in the 5th position, the non-breaking hyphen, endash, emdashes, double hyphens, etc... Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:25, 6 August 2025 (UTC)

Work VnExpress

Status

new bug

Reported by

Redalert2fan (talk) 16:08, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

What happens

work= VnExpress International – Latest news, business, travel and analysis from Vietnam

What should happen

VnExpress International or just VnExpress

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Daegu_International_Airport&diff=prev&oldid=1305346083

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Double last/first

Status

new bug

Reported by

Redalert2fan (talk) 19:00, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

What happens

|last1=Freed |first1=Jamie |last2=Freed |first2=Jamie

What should happen

only add |last1=Freed |first1=Jamie

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Greater_Bay_Airlines&diff=prev&oldid=1305380893

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

adds volume=no. 10

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:17, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

What happens

[27]

What should happen

[28]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Bad author: "User, Super"

Status

new bug

Reported by

Jay8g [V•T•E] 07:01, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

What happens

[29]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Bad title: "Rate limit reached"

Status

new bug

Reported by

Jay8g [V•T•E] 23:17, 15 August 2025 (UTC)

What happens

[30]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Italic tags

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:45, 19 August 2025 (UTC)

What should happen

[31], [32], [33], [34]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Bot changes "volume" to "issue" when only a single value is given

Status

new bug

Reported by

UtherSRG (talk) 14:54, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

What happens

"volume" changed to "issue"

What should happen

Not this. :)

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chaetopterus_bruneli&diff=prev&oldid=1307257118

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

TNT volume/issue/pages=Online first/Onlinefirst

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:42, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

What should happen

[35]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Associated Press

Status

new bug

Reported by

SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 01:29, 24 August 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Despite how "News" isn't actually part of the title for Associated Press, it for unclear reasons was wrongfully added next to that anyway, and that also shouldn't implement italics for a news agency's name.

Relevant diffs/links

diff

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Vol. cleanup

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:35, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

What should happen

[36]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

I've noticed this as a semi-frequent pattern. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:35, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

Figure out jstor based on URLs

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:56, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

What should happen

[37]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Fix weird hyphens

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:11, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

What should happen

[38]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

To be explicit, the journal name previously used a non-breaking hyphen character (‑) and Headbomb wants an ordinary hyphen (-) instead. The latter is more appropriate because it's fine to put a line break in the name Eighteenth‑Century Studies after "Eighteenth‑". This seems like a very low-priority change that should probably only be done when bundled with other changes. –jacobolus (t) 18:44, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

This would affect ~5 articles every month or so. Require bundling with other changes would be pointless, the point is to get rid of those editor-hostile oddities in citations. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:09, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

Purge hard coded non-breaking spaces and replace with regular space

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:50, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

What should happen

[39]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

The bot used to do that before, somehow it stopped. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:50, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

I don't think "Citation bot" should be editing non-citation parts of the article. Let some other bot or human do that if it seems necessary. –jacobolus (t) 18:39, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

This is about citations, not the rest of the article. The diff includes more, but check the espn.com and lequipe.fr references. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:59, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

Purge pubmed URLs

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:59, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

What should happen

[40]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Per the RFC. See also User_talk:Citation_bot/Archive_41#Yeet_PMID/OCLC_links_from_citations. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:59, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

Overzealous removal of URL

The {{cite book|url=foo}} template causes the title to link to the provided URL, which |DOI= without |doi-access=free does not. Please change the bot to only remove |url= if another parameter causes the same URL to be applied to the title. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 11:43, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

A {{cite book}} template without |url=, will not link |title= with |doi= regardless of the value assigned to |doi-access=:

{{cite book |title=Title |doi=10.1234/sommat}}

Title. doi:10.1234/sommat.

{{cite book |title=Title |doi=10.1234/sommat |doi-access=free}}

Title. doi:10.1234/sommat.

That functionality is reserved to {{cite journal}} and to {{citation}} when that template uses |journal=.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:54, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. That makes removing |url= even worse. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:37, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

You have laid this charge at the feet of Citation bot both here and at Help talk:Citation Style 1 §DOI, title, URL and Citation bot (permalink) without providing any evidence that the bot is actually acting as you claim it is. Diffs?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:45, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

An example is https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=UNIVAC_1103&curid=206658&diff=1308116358&oldid=1292002889 -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 17:09, 27 August 2025 (UTC)

@Chatul: The DOI points to the same place as the URL link, and is paywalled. It's unexpected for readers for a link on the title to lead to a paywalled resource; in general I think the bot has the right idea here of leaving the DOI and removing the URL (I routinely make similar changes manually). If you really want to, you could try to consistently link all of the titles to DOI links on some particular article, establishing a page-specific citation convention, but if you do, you should probably make sure that it's consistent article-wide and also add url-access=subscription to show a little red lock icon and make it clear to readers that they won't be able to read the paper by clicking that link unless they are paid subscribers to the publisher. –jacobolus (t) 18:31, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

If that's the issue then I would expect it to leave |url= and add |url-access=subscription. Having to click on the DOI is user hostile, even for a paywalled citation. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 20:30, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

Personally I'd rather have the URL left off if it points to a paywalled resource, but I think this is best left to local consensus on a page by page basis. –jacobolus (t) 23:24, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

Caps: Te Papa

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:15, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

What should happen

[41]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

10.1093/pnasnexus; 10.11158/saasp; 10.11646/megataxa; 10.11646/mesozoic; 10.22073/pja; 10.35249/rche; 10.37520/fi; 10.53562/ajcb are free

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 08:44, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

What should happen

[42]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

URL cleanup: #no-access-message

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:31, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

What should happen

[43]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

date=101

Status

new bug

Reported by

GoingBatty (talk) 15:53, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

What happens

adds |date=101

What should happen

nothing

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Victor_Hugo&diff=prev&oldid=1308805102

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

last1=Gear first1=Top

Status

new bug

Reported by

 Stepho  talk  02:42, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Bot adds last1=Gear |first1=Top for references to www.topgear.com but this is just the website name "Top Gear". Appreciated if "Top Gear" can be added to the list of disallowed author names.

What should happen

Even better if the actual change from https://web.archive.org/web/20120329005622/http://www.topgear.com/uk/car-news/porsche-911-gt2-rs-2010-05-12 could be last1=Philip |first1=Sam

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Porsche_911&diff=1308886375&oldid=1308885409

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Redundant edit and html-author ≠ actual author

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 05:11, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Adds work= and author= in [44]

What should happen

Not that. The added author appears to be the name of a random staffer who uploaded the content to the web, not the person who wrote the citation (probably that year's award committee chair, László Babai), and adding work=EATCS is wrong in two ways, because EATCS is an organization not a work and because it was already listed as expanded form as the publisher.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Properly TNT volume/issue for IUA Circular

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 08:00, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

[45]

What should happen

[46] note the last change

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

url, chapter-url parameters

Status

new bug

Reported by

Kowal2701 (talk) 21:38, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

changed the "url" parameter of a ref ({{cite book}}) to "chapter-url", when the url was for the whole book

What should happen

nothing!

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Sakalava_empire&diff=prev&oldid=1309227702

Replication instructions

The ones it got wrong were all Internet Archive links

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Bot edit did nothing but add one space character

The bot should not be making edits such as special:diff/1309371869 ("Suggested by Headbomb"). It is not important whether or not the citation template has a space before the final }}. The bot should not adjust whitespace like this at all (leave it to humans if someone cares), but it's especially obnoxious if there's no meaningful change whatsoever. –jacobolus (t) 18:23, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

Indeed. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:24, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

Adds Japanese catalog entry (nii.ac.jp) as url for reference

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 18:21, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Special:Diff/1309520480

What should happen

Not that. The link is useless for reading the reference.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Bad author: "Edit"

Status

new bug

Reported by

Jay8g [V•T•E] 19:43, 4 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

[47]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Bot's tag description breaks the layout on Special:Tags

Status

new bug

Reported by

Jack who built the house (talk) 07:10, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Not related to what bot does. Its tag description on Special:Tags stretches the content area in width because of the long link it adds:

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Tags?useskin=vector-2022

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Changes title to nowiki mathml markup

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 18:06, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Special:Diff/1309677381

What should happen

The change of template type and added journal metadata is fine, but the changed title is much worse and should not have been changed.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

@David Eppstein, there was some related discussion relevant to math (or other currently banned markup in citation template parameters) at Wikipedia talk:COinS#the COINS warning: where not to use, exactly? My proposal there is that we could try to explicitly specify a seprate machine-friendly title vs. human-friendly title, and then we wouldn't need to ban useful types of human-readable content from the citation templates. –jacobolus (t) 20:22, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

Ok, but mathml tags wrapped in nowiki are neither "useful types of human-readable content" nor particularly "machine-friendly". All this title needs to be correctly formatted and human-readable are some subscript tags (it involves a chemical formula, not mathematics). —David Eppstein (talk) 21:02, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

That's true, but I don't think that the machine-readable version can accept subscript tags either. As a general matter, I think it would be handy if we could specify something along the lines of

title=Cyclic ferroelectric switching and quantized charge transport in <chem>CuInP_2S_6</chem> {{cs1 fallback|Cyclic ferroelectric switching and quantized charge transport in CuInP₂S₆}}

And get it to render as "Cyclic ferroelectric switching and quantized charge transport in ${\ce {CuInP_2S_6}}$" but have the machine-readable metadata recorded as Cyclic ferroelectric switching and quantized charge transport in CuInP₂S₆. –jacobolus (t) 23:21, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

Relatedly, changing a journal article title from sentence case to title case in the process of an arxiv-to-journal conversion Special:Diff/1309755278 is also bad.

I think this happens because the paper itself has the title written on it as "Hexagonal Inflation Tilings and Planar Monotiles", as does the publisher's web page. –jacobolus (t) 23:23, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

Sure, but case is a style choice, not a semantic part of the title. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:44, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

What I mean is: perhaps the bot is designed to apply the style preferred by the paper publisher. That style seems somewhat common on Wikipedia (for better or worse). I'm not sure about exactly how the capitalization was chosen for citations in List of aperiodic sets of tiles, but they aren't consistently using one type of capitalization. Perhaps {{CS1 config}} should have a "capitalization=sentence" or "capitalization=title" parameter to indicate local preference. –jacobolus (t) 07:19, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

I like the idea of indicating a local preference, but I think it would be a bad idea if the citation templates were to use that to autocapitalize (just as it is a bad idea for the bot to change this capitalization). There are too many exceptions in both directions of words that should stay capitalized or lowercase regardless of the choice of capitalization for software to reliably get it right. Also, it depends on the kind of citation; my preference is sentence for article titles, and title for book and journal titles, but I've seen sentence for both or title for both. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:55, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

Fair enough: I can certainly imagine bots making a mess of this, as they do of most of the rest of their citation changes. Just to be clear then: your position is that bots should leave capitalization alone as long as the title listed in the citation is otherwise correct, and irrespective of what kind of capitalization is found among other citations on the page? Having bots err on the side of not taking potentially obnoxious actions seems fine with me.

Capitalization in Wikipedia article citations, even on carefully edited articles, is likely to stay wildly inconsistent. But there's not really too much harm in that, and someone can manually fix it if they feel like it. –jacobolus (t) 08:02, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

I suspect that it's generally quite inconsistent even within the published literature, especially in publications where the only real copyediting is by the authors themselves. It's something I care about but my experience is most of my coauthors don't. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:13, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

Fictious name added to citation

Status

new bug

Reported by

Achmad Rachmani (talk) 22:57, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=August_2025_Indonesian_protests&diff=prev&oldid=1309714928

What should happen

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=August_2025_Indonesian_protests&diff=prev&oldid=1309767581

Relevant diffs/links

August 2025 Indonesian protests

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Amigao suggests this edit. Bontang Post must not be an author's name. Achmad Rachmani (talk) 22:57, 5 September 2025 (UTC)

Malformed math expression with mathml content

Status

new bug

Reported by

Salix alba (talk): 13:31, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Inserted the text

<math><mmultiscripts>Ni<mprescripts/><none/>67</mmultiscripts></math>

where the content of the <math> tag is mathml rather than LaTex.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Miniball_experiment&diff=prev&oldid=1309849341

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Bad edit

How do I prevent the bot from making this bad edit again? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:09, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

This edit seems about right, though pages=21 should be page=21, and it would probably be clearer to write website=The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery rather than work=The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery. To suppress bot edits to a particular citation though, add a comment before the first parameter of the template (the docs suggest <!-- Citation bot bypass-->) –jacobolus (t) 10:46, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Enable bot run on Category:CS1 maint: missing class

Self-explanatory. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:19, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

10.53347 is free (Radiopedia)

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:55, 11 September 2025 (UTC)

What should happen

[48]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

More Things to TNT

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:15, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

What should happen

Pubmed.ncbi.NLM.nih.gov, Pubmed, National Institutes of Health, PMC, National Library of Medicine

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Both linked and unlinked should be TNT'd. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:15, 12 September 2025 (UTC)

Adds doi to main publisher landing page to journal

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 18:21, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

In Special:Diff/1311135505 (first difference), it added a doi to a web page citation to a journal editorial board. The doi does not go to the correct web page. It goes to a different but related page, the main landing page for the journal itself. Reaching the editorial board from that page requires finding and navigating two levels into a navigation menu on the doi page.

What should happen

Not that

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Adds redundant work= when publisher= is present

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 01:44, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

In Special:Diff/1311372245 (triggered by but obviously not checked carefully by User:Abductive), the bot adds |work=Fundacja na rzecz Nauki Polskiej to a citation that already had |publisher=Foundation for Polish Science. Obviously it would not be reasonable to expect the bot to understand that they say the same thing, but I think it should not be adding work= when publisher= is present.

What should happen

Not that.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Bad title: The Wikipedia Library

Status

new bug

Reported by

Jay8g [V•T•E] 06:59, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

[49]

What should happen

remove TWL proxy from URL and then get the title

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

None journal

Status

new bug

Reported by

Dušan Kreheľ (talk) 15:52, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

This is not true (its only artice on web pages, none journal)

Relevant diffs/links

Special:Diff/1311908964

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

403 Forbidden is a useless title

Status

new bug

Reported by

Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:51, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

title is set to "403 Forbidden"

What should happen

a meaningful title should be used

Relevant diffs/links

Special:Diff/1312247661

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

More academic.oup.com handling

Status

new bug

Reported by

Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 14:17, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Could the bot learn to do these edits?

What should happen

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Josve05a/sandbox/academic&diff=prev&oldid=1312585119

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Also in this edit the URL should have been added as a |chapter-url=. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 14:49, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

Wiki expansion

This bot has only ran in certain wikis, and we need more. My suggestion is that you add this bot to the Croatian, French, German, Polish and Spanish Wikipedia. This could benefit the bot very well. WikiHelper3906 (talk) 15:26, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

Numeric name added to citation (September 2025)

Status

new bug

Reported by

Achmad Rachmani (talk) 10:54, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bhayangkara_Presisi_Lampung_F.C.&diff=prev&oldid=1312562700

What should happen

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bhayangkara_Presisi_Lampung_F.C.&diff=prev&oldid=1312741970

Relevant diffs/links

Bhayangkara Presisi Lampung F.C.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Abductive suggests this edit. The Pandit Football article shows the numeric name "Redaksi 24" in the current version, which should be replaced with the actual name "Septian Nugraha" in the archived version. Achmad Rachmani (talk) 10:57, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

Supplement PDF

Status

new bug

Reported by

— Omegatron (talk) 14:21, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

"Removed URL that duplicated identifier." except the removed URL links directly to the supplementary content being cited, while the DOI only goes to the document itself.

What should happen

URLs with more info than the DOI should not be removed.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=GW250114&diff=prev&oldid=1312201892

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Citation_bot/Archive_42#Supplement_PDF

Yes, this is a bug. The bot is silently destroying information; it is not harmless. http://link.aps.org/supplemental/10.1103/kw5g-d732 is not the same as doi:10.1103/kw5g-d732 and should not be automatically removed. Linking directly to the PDF is a workaround, not a fix. — Omegatron (talk) 14:21, 22 September 2025 (UTC)

Duplicates Volume Number as Issue number for Yeats Annual

Status

new bug

Reported by

Jahaza (talk) 21:34, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

There are a number of edits made by the bot here. I'm not sure all of them are ideal, but the most concerning is that it takes what I had coded as Volume 20 and replaces it with Volume 20 and Issue 20, which is incorrect, as this is an annual journal and doesn't have issue numbers. I'm not sure where it's pulling this info from? Maybe it's a data source problem, but maybe it's a bot problem?

What should happen

Nothing. The citation correctly said that it was volume 20 of the annual.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Wanderings_of_Oisin&diff=prev&oldid=1311789209

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Advances in Enzymology and Related Subjects of Biochemistry not a journal

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:18, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

[50]

What should happen

[51]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Integrate Monkbot 21

See User:Monkbot/task 21: Replace page(s) with article-number

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:26, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

Untitled_new_bug

Status

new bug

Reported by

Green Montanan (talk) 06:34, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Citation has no date. Bot got confused because the author responded to a post, and added the date of the response to a citation template

What should happen

Do not add a date because the website has no date

Relevant diffs/links

special:diff/1313487570 (see the last change, made in the "Further reading section")

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Page # errors

Edits such as this one are adding article numbers as page numbers, causing citation errors. This appears to have been going on for some time.  Mr.choppers | ✎  08:47, 1 October 2025 (UTC)