User talk:Citation bot

Note that the bot's maintainer can go weeks without logging in to Wikipedia and can no longer devote extensive time to bot maintenance. If a major bug arises and goes unnoticed, it may go unnoticed; as such, important matters may warrant an e-mail. Breaking changes to templates maintained by the bot will be more readily addressed if advance notice can be given.

Please click here to report an error.

This bot is only periodically maintained and new feature requests are no longer being considered. The code is open source and interested parties are invited to assist with the operation and extension of the bot; contact User:Smith609.

Bot is acting funny on Operation Market Garden

Status

Resolved

Reported by

Dianna (talk) 02:46, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Type of bug

Deleterious

What happens

The bot is removing definitions of named references, thus breaking them.

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Operation_Market_Garden&action=submit

Replication instructions

This edit was performed (but not saved) by opening an edit window and clicking on the "Citations" button.

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

Requested action from maintainer

Spank bot, please.

Diannaa, your link merely opens the edit window for the article. Looking back through the page history, I see two recent citation bot edits - this and this. Which one is in error; or is it both, or neither? --Redrose64 (talk) 15:07, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for not replying sooner. It looks like the first of the two edits is where most of the damage occurred; the bot removed a bunch of citations outright. But both were bad; the second edit totally removed the citation named "notes". User:Pumpkin Sky undid the two edits to restore the lost citations. -- Dianna (talk) 18:46, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Lots of reference definitions removed

Status

Resolved

Reported by

Mirokado (talk) 11:34, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

lots of reference definitions removed, both within the article body and the refs definition list

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rambhadracharya&diff=497517082&oldid=497394723

Replication instructions

not sure

We can't proceed until

Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

Requested action from maintainer

please check, comment, fix if necessary...

Reference content removed

Status

Resolved

Reported by

StarryGrandma (talk) 23:46, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

A complete reference was changed to a broken reference name. The reference had two urls, an additional url in it for the publishing organization.

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Banana_equivalent_dose&diff=495264583&oldid=491818370

We can't proceed until

Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

Requested action from maintainer

Better algorithm for duplicate references or stop removing duplicates.

The bot went wrong by removing the second of two references. The article uses a list of named references in the reference section between reference and /reference. The reference in the text can be referred to by name, but the full reference needs to be in the reference list. StarryGrandma (talk) 00:08, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Two different references with the same name seems to confuse the botAManWithNoPlan (talk) 04:25, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Changing « and »

Status

Resolved

Reported by

Voxii (talk) 18:27, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

The bot changes « and » into quotes ("). Sometimes these symbols are used for other reasons (usually in auto-generated web page titles).

What should happen

While preserving «/» isn't strictly necessary (</>, ‹/›, •, etc. would be fine too), I don't think changing them to quotes makes sense in all cases.

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Avril_Lavigne_discography&diff=next&oldid=501050940

We can't proceed until

Input from editors

Requested action from maintainer

Remove or alter the code to not change «/», or possibly make exceptions for cases as shown in example.

It changes them in Russian too. If an article title has « in I would hope that the bot would keep it like that. The English translation doesn't have the offending character in, but the bot shouldn't alter the Russian. Secretlondon (talk) 01:20, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that this behaviour is in order to comply with style guidelines that recommend the use of straight quotes. Could you consult the WP:MOS and confirm how it suggests that quotes are handled? Thanks. 131.111.184.106 (talk) 07:32, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dnestr_radar&diff=505189760&oldid=505188214 It should leave « alone in titles that are in language=Russian and only replace if the « is in trans_title Secretlondon (talk) 01:15, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Deleted apparently fine refs

Status

Resolved

Reported by

bridies (talk) 13:42, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Type of bug

Deleterious: Human-input data is deleted or articles are otherwise significantly affected. Many bot edits require undoing.

What happens

Not really sure, it seemed to have a problem with spacing in a few of my refs, and so... nuked them

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nuclear_Strike&diff=506555436&oldid=506549955

Replication instructions

???

We can't proceed until

Input from editors

I'm just reporting a one off diff here, haven't looked into it much, but it wasn't pretty. bridies (talk) 13:42, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I can't replicate this. Can you? Or has it been fixed in the past year? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 17:44, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Cite PMC

Status

Resolved

Reported by

AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:49, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

cite pmc template that are invalid redirects are created

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Cite_pmc/353042&oldid=512290843

Replication instructions

The bot just does this

We can't proceed until

Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

Requested action from maintainer

Fix the bot, or perhaps remove support for {{cite pmc}}

The Citation bot does all sorts of horrible things with {{cite pmc}}, but we closed those bugs when {{cite pmc}} was deleted. Some one recreated {{cite pmc}} for no good reason. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 02:02, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Can you point to some articles that are affected by this behaviour, so that I can investigate? Thanks. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 08:34, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Many {{cite pmc}}'s point to nothing. see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Cite_pmc/1293471&oldid=519153403 The bot regularly creates these bogus redirects. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:39, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

That given example is only transcluded one place, in a userspace subpage: Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Cite_pmc/1293471 Perhaps the bot shouldn't be operating on pages outside articlespace (except for the specific areas of templatespace needed)? LeadSongDog come howl! 22:13, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

The citation bot creates these pages. Very strange. It just keeps insisting that it is right, such as this http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Cite_pmc/353042&action=history AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:54, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

There are several instances of wikilinks to these templates (not transclusions) in user:NTox/CSD log that may be connected. LeadSongDog come howl! 04:51, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Example of the bot breaking a good template. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3ACite_pmc%2F344826&diff=520120689&oldid=510508922 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:05, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Example of bot destroying good stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3ACite_pmc%2F112890&diff=531588177&oldid=530155864 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:22, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

• I can't replicate this behaviour. Can you help? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 13:44, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
  • Just go to this page and see all the pages that the bot has generated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Cite_pmid/ AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:29, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
    • Seems to be 17 instances over the past year or so. Some of these AMWNP has corrected, only to be reverted by the bot! We could just pipetrick the uses of cite pmc with equivalent uses of cite pmid, or (better) of cite journal. It isn't that commonly used anyhow. LeadSongDog come howl! 20:04, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Edits examples in citation instruction page

Status

Resolved

Reported by

Jc3s5h (talk) 23:25, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Type of bug

Deleterious

What happens

Edits Wikipedia space including instructional pages

What should happen

confine editing to article space

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AReferencing_for_beginners_with_citation_templates&diff=523064308&oldid=506928152

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

Just use template bots | deny = citation bot to exclude the bot from a page. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:04, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Unnecessary capitalization near mid-name ü

Status

new bug

Reported by

Olli Niemitalo (talk) 11:39, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Cosmetic

What happens

When using {{cite doi}}, in the author last name, the letter after a mid-word ü gets capitalized. Sometimes also ü itself gets capitalized.

What should happen

The capitalization should not be altered in this case.

Relevant diffs/links

[1] and [2]

Replication instructions

Citing any article by Traunmüller using {{cite doi}} should replicate the bug.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Fixes applied to Google Books meta page URL

Status

Resolved

Reported by

 — daranz [ t ] 21:03, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

Bot wraps a URL to a page about Google Books (ie, not a book on Google Books) in {{cite journal}}

What should happen

Probably should leave it entirely alone

Relevant diffs/links

[3]

We can't proceed until

Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

A very special case. The vast majority of cites to books.google.com will not be to pages about that service. Even then, few will be naked URLs. Fixed the wikitext.LeadSongDog come howl! 22:01, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree that it's very much an edge case, but it may be worth excluding the bot from the Google Books article (or the topic area), if this gets more annoying.  — daranz [ t ] 22:04, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Adds last2 but not first2, and with pre-exisiting co-authors still present, the last2 name is then shown twice.

Status

Resolved

Reported by

212.139.104.161 (talk) 08:47, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

What happens

Existing entry has last1=... , first1=... and coauthors=... . Bot adds last2=... , but not first2=... . The pre-existing co-authors=... part remains, so duplicate surname shows for the "last2" name. Requires manual addition of the first2=... part and manual deletion of the coauthors=... part.

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chebarkul_meteorite&diff=prev&oldid=541282312

Replication instructions

covered above

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

This seems like an ongoing theme. Articles have inconsistent mix of uses between |authors=, |author1=/|author2=..., |last1=/|last2=, and |coauthors=. These mixes do not seem to be consistently resolved, either with the bot or manually. There should be a discussion on this question in a broader forum. LeadSongDog come howl! 14:13, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I remember seeing "coauthors (deprecated)" somewhere on my travels. There needs to be a simple way to convert existing coauthors data to whatever is the new way of managing extra names, as well as some sort of error message shown when editors try to use the coauthors element within new citations. -- 212.139.104.161 (talk) 14:59, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but many editors still use it. Trying to convert multiple names in the coauthors field automatically is not going to be a simple task. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:03, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

An easy first step would be getting rid of all the unpopulated instances of |coauthors=| (and variations for whitespace). Then we'd at least know how many substantive instances we have to deal with.LeadSongDog come howl! 17:49, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

RefToolbar and maybe ProveIT support coauthors. Probably other tools as well. --— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:31, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Removal of content from table on citation cleanup

Status

Resolved

Reported by

MASEM (t) 16:04, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Deleterious

What happens

The bot, when processing this article, appears to have removed re-used named citations that were embedded in tables, as well as remove content from those tables. I don't see any immediate logic for why this was the case.

Relevant diffs/links

[4]

We can't proceed until

A specific edit to the bot's code is requested below.

Requested action from maintainer

Review of what happened here.

(talk page stalker) - It appears that the bot incorrectly deleted two instances of <ref name="foobar" />...</ref> - GoingBatty (talk) 22:39, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

User:RoslynSKP/Battle of Sheria

Status

Resolved

Reported by

Rskp (talk) 06:41, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

Thanks for your interest, but grouping the references is a bit premature as the article is only just starting. Please don't group the references in any of the other articles which I am currently in the process of creating because they are only drafts, at this stage. --Rskp (talk) 06:41, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

This refers to this edit and this one. The main question is: why is the bot making edits in user space at all? --Redrose64 (talk) 14:19, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Have undone them, so no probs. But definitely weird. Do you know an editor who can fix the bot? --Rskp (talk) 00:34, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

It's easy to stop the bot editing a given page using a template (I think ("{Bots| deny=Citation Bot"} will do it). Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:51, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

bot does not like invisible characters

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 515

Reported by

Martin451 (talk) 21:58, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Improvement: The bot would be much better if ...

What happens

Bot cannot lookup doi even though it appears correct to the human eye.

What should happen

Bot should ignore invisible characters

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AMartin451%2Fsandbox&diff=549399559&oldid=549399492

Replication instructions

copy and paste a DOI from the Journal of experimental biology website. The bot claim the DOI won't work even though it is correct to the human eye. When editing, there seems to be an extra character between the / and jeb, or some kind of unseen markup. Deleting this character and the / then putting the / back in on the second link, and the bot worked, I have left the first doi broken.

We can't proceed until

Operator: Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

| status =

Resolved

Several mutually-exclusive parameters used

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 520

Reported by

Redrose64 (talk) 13:50, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

Template:Cite doi/10.1038.2Fnchembio.189 was created by, and has only ever been edited by, the Citation bot family. The present version uses {{Cite journal}} which has been given several mutually-exclusive parameters: |first1=L. |last2=Rawat |author2=Rawat |first2=M. |author3=La Clair |last4=Jothivasan |last3=La Clair |last5=Budiarto |first3=J. |author4=Jothivasan |first4=K. |last7=Claiborne |author5=Budiarto |last8=Helmann |first5=T. |last1=Newton |last9=Fahey |first6=J. |author7=Claiborne |last6=Hamilton |author6=Hamilton |first7=A. |author8=Helmann |first8=D. |author9=Fahey |first9=C.

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

Can you spell out the problem and desired outcome? At a cursory glance the above string doesn't seem to cause an error. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:37, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

{{cite journal}} now uses the new Module:Citation/CS1 core. The new core has more error checking, such as duplicate parameters. See Help:CS1 errors. The older version of this citation was:

Newton, L.; Rawat, M.; La Clair, J.; Jothivasan, K.; Budiarto, T.; Hamilton, J.; Claiborne, A.; Helmann, D.; Fahey, C. (2009). "Bacillithiol is an antioxidant thiol produced in Bacilli". Nature chemical biology. 5 (9): 625–627. doi:10.1038/nchembio.189. ISSN 1552-4450. PMC 3510479. PMID 19578333. {{cite journal}}: More than one of |author2= and |last2= specified (help); More than one of |author3= and |last3= specified (help); More than one of |author4= and |last4= specified (help); More than one of |author5= and |last5= specified (help); More than one of |author6= and |last6= specified (help); More than one of |author7= and |last7= specified (help); More than one of |author8= and |last8= specified (help); More than one of |author9= and |last9= specified (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

If you check the history, you will see that the bot added these duplicate parameters. --  Gadget850 ^talk 15:32, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Here's a similar example from a different cite doi template. The template, for some reason, had "author1" and "first1" for the authors' names, which is incorrect but was working. I ran the citation expander bot on it, and it blew up with duplicate parameters. The bot added "last" params for each author, leaving the "author" parameters in place. I don't expect the bot to deal well with a poorly-formatted edge case like this one, but if it can do so without too much trouble, go for it. (BTW, I love the new feature that cleans up the obnoxious and previously time-consuming "displayauthors" Lua error. Great work.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:45, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

I have been encountering lots of this problem as well, as can be seen in this diff showing the result of Citation bot's work. This is not an incorrect edge case where "author" and "first" were originally being wrongly used simultaneously. In this case, only "author" was being used, and Citation bot decided to add "last" parameters, causing errors to be displayed on the processed page. This has happened to me many times, although I usually catch it in preview when using the bot to assist with new citations. I think the desired behavior would be for the bot to refrain from adding "last" or "first" to templates with existing "author" fields, would it not? Azaghal of Belegost (talk) 18:24, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Should be fixed in r520, for good this time! Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 17:24, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Bot overwrites a redirect, essentially duplicating a moved article at its pre-move name

Status

Resolved

Reported by

Redrose64 (talk) 09:52, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Benny Award had been moved to mainspace as Benny Award. The bot then overwrote the redirect that had been created as part of that move. This meant that there were two similar pages (although not identical) where there should only have been one.

What should happen

Bot should leave redirects alone

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Benny_Award&diff=prev&oldid=553301305

We can't proceed until

Input from editors

Another instance. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:45, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Another. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:46, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

And another. This one was worse, because it was then taken as an entirely new AFC submission and moved to mainspace as Infectious Diseases In American Prisons even though the same article had already been moved to Infectious diseases within American prisons. Duplicate articlea in mainspace therefore existed. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:54, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Looks like a race condition. Not sure how I can resolve? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Smith609 (talk • contribs)

Would it not be possible to have the bot check the target article history after saving a revision? If edited within the runtime window (plus perhaps 2 minutes) there is a substantial risk of a race, so self-revert and restart.LeadSongDog come howl! 19:39, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Great idea! Thanks! I'll implement this in the next update. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 06:59, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Another case. I gave up looking for these some months ago, but it's clearly still happening - here's another. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:27, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Valid HTML comment markers are broken

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 437

Reported by

Redrose64 (talk) 22:27, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience: Humans must occasionally make immediate edits to clean up after the bot

What happens

One of the {{cite news}} templates had two of its parameters placed between valid HTML comment markers, i.e. <!--| archiveurl=http://www.webcitation.org/5nospLAte | archivedate=February 25, 2010--> the bot has taken the open-comment marker <!-- and decided it was "unused data", moved it after the close-comment marker

What should happen

leave it alone

Relevant diffs/links

[5]

We can't proceed until

Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

Two closing braces were removed in error

Status

Resolved

Reported by

Redrose64 (talk) 22:30, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience: Humans must occasionally make immediate edits to clean up after the bot

What happens

Two closing braces were removed in error

Relevant diffs/links

[6] [7]

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

Backwards page ranges

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 436

Reported by

Redrose64 (talk) 20:21, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

Bot alters a single page to a page range; but the second page number is lower than the first

Relevant diffs/links

pages = 87–10 pages = 3–1

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

Does this systematically occur when going from, say, two digits to three? Or could it be that the data the bot is using is from a pre-publication version that has different pagination? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:30, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

I really don't know. The point is that before the bot edit, the |pages= parameter held a meaningful value, even if, as a single page number, it should actually have been in the |page= parameter; but after the bot edit, it is no longer meaningful, because the number representing the end of the page range is lower than the number representing the start of the range. I have found out that the second example was probably supposed to be |pages=3–11 which suggests that it has been truncated; but using the same method on the first, I came up with |pages=87–96 which cannot become |pages=97–10 by simple truncation. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:56, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Creating broken redirects

Status

Resolved

Reported by

:) ·Salvidrim!· ✉ 00:54, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

Creation of at least one broken redirect.

What should happen

I'm not terribly sure what the intended behaviour is, but creating broken redirects certainly isn't desireable.

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cite_pmid/20212135

We can't proceed until

Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

• This is absolutely not fixed. See Template:Cite pmid/17800970. :) ·Salvidrim!· ✉ 23:53, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Citation Bot 1

Hi there. This bot is blocked and inactive, as a result its bot flag will soon be removed to try and tidy up our list of accounts with bot flags. If you have any problems get in touch with me on my talk page! ·Add§hore· ^{Talk To Me!} 10:42, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Why is the bot blocked? I can't work out how to find this out. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:25, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Resolved

Blocked

You have been blocked indefinitely from editing for failure to fix the issues described at #Update required to avoid deleterious impact on new Lua-based citations and other threads on this page. If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, you may appeal this block by adding below this notice the text {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}, but you should read the guide to appealing blocks first.  Redrose64 (talk) 23:20, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

I miss this bot. It helped me every day. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:09, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Same here :-( Meodipt (talk) 07:05, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

What the heck?? This is one of the most useful tools here. Please have this fixed soonest. Not having this tool creates a HUGE amount of extra work. --Randykitty (talk) 09:50, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

well we've got an editor that wants to list 33 authors in a citation because the new system lets them. meanwhile, other editors use diberri's style which shows 3–5 authors. i remember the diberri crowd getting upset a while back because authors 6–9 were being added. i can't imagine how they'll respond when the size of their articles doubles for all the tertiary authors.  —Chris Capoccia ^T⁄_C 10:44, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

The essential problem is that the maintainer of this bot hasn't apparently fixed any bugs since August, and hasn't even commented on any bug reports since October. In that time about 40 bug reports have been filed. One of the most frequently recurring is the incompatibility with expanded Lua author lists, where the bot is destructively reverting the efforts of Wikipedians, though that's certainly not the only issue. Essentially, it appears that this bot has been abandoned by its author. If someone else wants to take up the mantle of fixing and maintaining this bot, it appears that the source code is here. Dragons flight (talk) 17:52, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Went ahead and updated the userpage to reflect the inactivity. RIP Citation bot! --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 18:50, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I just emailed the bot owner and to my bafflement, nobody had tried that yet, so he was blissfully unaware of these issues (apparently having been less active on WP). Unfortunately, he's leaving for a vacation, so he won't be able to help anytime soon. I must say that I find the cavalier way in which this important tool has been blocked and, by blanking the user page, people are apparently simply putting this bot aside, highly disconcerting. I mean, really, this guy is currently less active and people just keep posting notices here and nobody even tries to email him directly? If this were some minor tool, OK, but this is a hugely important bot and its non-functioning is causing broken templates ("will be completed in the next few minutes") all over (I think it also does the cite pmid template, not just the doi one). I realize that people editing articles on manga, computer games, or sports figures will not be inconvenienced, but anybody editing in the sciences will be severely handicapped by the absence of this bot. --Randykitty (talk) 21:03, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

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

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

---

Request reason:

see below

Accept reason:

Unblocked. Closedmouth (talk) 14:27, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

I believe this issue to be resolved. As such, it should be safe to unblock the bot. Please let me know if any further changes are required. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:18, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Are any of the bugs that were causing the bot to be blocked (getting into edit wars with users and removing correct information from citations) fixed? Because "owner is going on vacation and still won't look at anything for a while" sounds like the opposite of resolved to me. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:27, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Bug again [8]: not resolved (note that maintainer does not have a clue about "CS1", while the discussion has multiple links).

Bug [[#A {{cite doi}} reversed into error]] [9] was not a section (misformed when entered). It now is. Still open, and CS1 related: the bot re-introduces a CS1 error.

Clearly the maintainer has not grasped the CS1 effects. They are mentioned multiple times on this page, including the module and help links. Also I find it strange that we are supposed to mail, while this page is automated for bug reports. -DePiep (talk) 17:35, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Bug #Bot assumes that pipe is part of URL declared "won't fix" after bad reasoning. (probably introduces errors since CS1 is introduced; at least in the example. -DePiep (talk) 17:37, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Bug #unused_data: no response. It introduces a CS1 error. -DePiep (talk) 17:43, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

A temporary fix is to add: "{{bots|deny=Citation bot}}" to the article. I strongly agree that full CS1 support needs to be implemented, but at the same time, blocking the bot is causing more problems than it solves. Boghog (talk) 19:26, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't sound "temporal" to me. Some CS1-issues (introducing errors) are ignored while declared "all fine". The automated bug reporter was removed (by Nathan2055) and not restored [10]. Bot owner now asks to mail for urgent fixes, and asks pre-announcements for lager exterior changes (as was going over to CS1 I assume). Strangely enough, such a "please adapt the bot to the new situation" are many on this page, but were not read as such (even if they were made post-change with diffs). Meanwhile, yesterday some 12 bugreports have been archived [11]. Some have been changed bugstatus yesterday, but without elaborating the discussion with post-CS1 effects. -DePiep (talk) 07:28, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

• I would like to note that this bot is user-activated (even when it fills in cite doi templates, because that us triggered by editor an editor adding such a template). I always use the "history" link that is displayed after the bot has run and look at the changes. If I use a bot like this (reflinks is another example), it is my responsibility to check that the bot did not introduce errors. Of course, ultimately the bot should run flawlessly, but at this point, not having it is worse. --Randykitty (talk) 07:55, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

There are examples in this buglist that the bot came back and re-introduced errors after I corrected them. What you are saying is more like WP:AWB, where you have to click personally to enter a proposed edit. This bot is not like that. You cannot make me responsible for what the bot does automatically, sometimes days after my edit. Also this remark contradicts the advice to enter {{bots|deny=citation bot}}. -DePiep (talk) 08:29, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Automated botreporter reinstalled. It was not removed by the bot maintainer. [12] -DePiep (talk) 08:43, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

Quite simply: since the bot relies on {{citation}} templates (basically, that was {{citation/core}}, now Module:citation/CS1) it should comply with that one. It should not introduce errors because of this omission. Putting the load and responsibility on the invoking editor for this is incorrect attitude -- that is not why is is a bot. -DePiep (talk) 08:29, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

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

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

---

Request reason:

Please also unblock User:Citation bot 1, which was missed when the above unblock request was actioned. This block is stopping me from fixing bugs! Thanks. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 09:23, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Accept reason:

this one unblocked as well Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:54, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Resolved

Removal of table content

Status

Resolved

Reported by

MASEM (t) 15:23, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Deleterious

What happens

Bot removed several rows from a table while trying to clean references.

Relevant diffs/links

[13]

Replication instructions

n/a

We can't proceed until

Operator

-->

Comment mishandling

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 434

Reported by

Auric talk 12:37, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Deleterious: Human-input data is deleted or articles are otherwise significantly affected. Many bot edits require undoing.

What happens

Bot adds interviewee as author, causing error

Relevant diffs/links

history

Replication instructions

remove line |author1=C.A.R.. Wait for bot to restore it.

We can't proceed until

A specific edit to the bot's code is requested below.

Requested action from maintainer

Fix or stop

I added {{nobots}} to that citation so that at least we can have a correct citation while this bug is open. Once the bug is fixed, bot access to the cite should be restored. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:04, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Author mis-numbering

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 435

Reported by

Bhny (talk) 15:55, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

We can't proceed until

A specific edit to the bot's code is requested below.

It added a large mess of text to the reference here [[14]]. Bhny (talk) 15:55, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

doi templates

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 434

Reported by

– Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 16:24, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Deleterious: Human-input data is deleted or articles are otherwise significantly affected. Many bot edits may require undoing.

What happens

{{Cite doi/10.1021.2Fed044p475}} has had a problem from the start. It places the author's name in both the author1 parameter and the last1/first1 parameters, which some of us catch with a code in our .css file.

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3ACite_doi%2F10.1021.2Fed044p475&diff=561837547&oldid=561837491

We can't proceed until

Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

Requested action from maintainer

Please find an adjustment for this bot that will cause it to respond appropriately to author parameters in Cite (whatever) templates (especially the Cite doi ones). Note... if you place the following code in your vector.css file (or whatever skin you use to edit), then you will see the error code for this problem at the link showing what happens specified above.

.citation-comment {
   display: inline !important;
   color: red;
 }

I placed the Deny template on the page for now; several editors have been reverting since January. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 16:27, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

This is the particular error that this bot makes and that editors keep trying to fix. – Paine Ellsworth ^CLIMAX! 20:31, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Abbreviation of first names with dashes.

Status

Accepted

Reported by

Chire (talk) 10:56, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Cosmetic

What happens

"Hans-Peter" is abbreviated to: "H. -P." (with extra whitespace before the dash)

What should happen

I would have expected: "H.-P." without a whitespace.

Relevant diffs/links

Examples (see change history): Template:Cite_doi/10.1145.2F335191.335388, Template:Cite_doi/10.1145.2F1645953.1646195

Replication instructions

Cite an article with a first name containing a dash.

We can't proceed until

A specific edit to the bot's code is requested below.

Requested action from maintainer

Update author formatting on Cite Doi templates

At least in Germany, "H.-P." would be the canonical shortening. No whitespace is inserted, as this is a single first name, and there was no whitespace in it originally either.

Worse, the bot even undid my manual fix in this edit, probably triggered by adding the issue, a similar change happened in one where it added the ISBN. --Chire (talk) 10:56, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

The bot undoing a manual fix is a recurring issue. I am wondering why a bot is getting so much leeway. "done so many other good things" will wear out. -DePiep (talk) 20:13, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

The bot is exclusion compliant. If there's a problem, just tell it to stay out. In those two cases, though, the entirely wrong template was in use. The sources cited were conference proceedings, not journals. In general, cite doi is only reliable for journal citations.LeadSongDog come howl! 21:56, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Really? This limitation is mentioned nowhere in the cite doi documentation — it says that it uses cite journal syntax, but not that it is only for journal articles. Many conference proceedings papers have dois, and the template documentation says that it can be used whenever a source has a doi. If so, it should be stated much more prominently in the docs, and this is yet another reason to ditch cite doi. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:35, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

re LeadSongDog: The bot is exclusion compliant. If there's a problem, just tell it to stay out. You do not get the concept of a bot. That "problem" is not mine to solve. It is a bug.

Frankly, LeadSongDog, your contributions on this page are predominantly along that line: "nothing wrong with the bot, it's you who has to act/think". Sure. Though your remarks look simple, they are employing a trick of deviation again and again. Now, since you play down bugs this way repeatedly, what is your association with the bot master? -DePiep (talk) 00:07, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

@David: I don't need any more reasons, I've been arguing against cite doi for a long time and I don't use it myself. Looking at Template:Cite_doi I see it starts with the use of Template:Cite_doi/preload, which transcludes Template:Cite journal. Likewise Template:Cite pmid. A change to the /doc is evidently in order.LeadSongDog come howl! 04:37, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

@DePiep: If you actually read all of what I've said here, I think you'll see your opinion was hasty. My only associations with the bot master are attempting to help resolve issues when editors find problems with a very useful but (like all others) imperfect bot. When this happens, which is obviously more than we would like, I try to clarify what the use-case is to facilitate debugging. In some simple cases, such as [[./#The bot is trying to add an f word with every edit]] (above), I've even been able to identify parts of the bot code that need to be fixed, but I don't understand it well enough to take on its operation myself. On occasion when the bot owner is not on-wiki I have used his enabled wiki-email to advise him there is an issue. That is what is known as constructive engagement. I suggest you try it yourself, rather than repeatedly engaging in groundless innuendo about fellow editors. LeadSongDog come howl! 03:27, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

How exactly does "journal vs. proceedings" play a role here? (Plus, the citation bot should make the decision based on the DOI, instead of me having to use a different template!) Are journal authors not allowed to have dashes in their name? I bet I can find a "true" journal article where the same thing happens!. E.g. here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Cite_doi/10.1007.2Fs10618-012-0300-z&oldid=562662774 - while it at least did not undo my manual changes, it failed to give the first name correctly: it lost the dash this time completely.

Just to recall: I'm more concerned about the handling of the dash, than of the bot undoing my changes. The process of preventing the bot from further edits is well documented. But I'd prefer if it gets the dashes right, without manual editing... --Chire (talk) 22:17, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

A proceedings should be cited with {{cite conference}}, which uses different formatting than {{cite journal}}. {{cite doi}} uses journal formatting, so it should not be used for conference papers. As for the example you show, the correct abbreviation for the third author is "Kriegel, H.-P.", so I agree that citation bot's removal of the dash is incorrect. It's hard to tell whether the problem is a bug in how the bot is coded, or a bug in the data source that the bot is using for this citation, though. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:30, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not seeing a data source for the abbreviation "H.-P." vice the spelled-out forename "Hans-Peter" given at crossref. Is there one? LeadSongDog come howl! 06:12, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

• Please ensure that the formatting instructions at Template:Cite doi/doc are updated to reflect the consensus reached here. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 13:58, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Book reviews being improperly added to book citations

Status

Resolved

Reported by

SteveMcCluskey (talk) 17:02, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Deleterious:

What happens

The bot incorrectly adds a reference of a book review to a citation of a book. In the instance cited below, it added a reference to a review in Nature to a citation of De Lacy O'Leary's How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs. As is not uncommon for reviews, the review had the same title as the book under review.

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Astrolabe&curid=73664&diff=563443360&oldid=561338672

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

Requested action from maintainer

Please fix as appropriate.

I've just noticed that this error happened to a citation, not to a cite book template. Apparently (or so it seems from the documentation) Citation Bot will not make such changes to cite book templates.

However, in the same article Citation Bot changed a bunch of cite book templates to citation templates. This opens the way for a two step corruption process in which on round one a cite book template is changed to a citation template, and in round two the citation template is corrupted by adding a review. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 17:26, 9 July 2013 (UTC) Looks like a

This is a database error. The review is listed on the AdsAbs database with the author given for the book. As such, there's no way to discriminate a book review from a journal. Can you think of any way to solve this? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 16:53, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Unnecessary "class" parameter insertion for Template:Cite arXiv

Status

new bug

Reported by

Teika kazura (talk) 07:47, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Cosmetic

What happens

Hi. The "class" parameter of Template:Cite arXiv should only be inserted when it cannot be read off from the "eprint" parameter, but the bot seems to supply one indiscriminantly. It's not fatal, but hurts the readability a bit. Compare the first and the second examples in Template:Cite_arxiv#Examples, for when it's necessary and not. Thanks in advance.

Relevant diffs/links

this edit

We can't proceed until

Input from editors

• Can you provide a logic that will resolve this? For example, "If the arXiv id begins with a letter, unset the class parameter"? I will be able to integrate the requested function with this information, but am not familiar enough with the arXiv format to try to guess it myself. Thanks, Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 08:48, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

If |class=foobar matches |eprint=foobar/barboo, then remove |class=foobar. That would probably cover 99% of cases. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:32, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

@Martin: Your idea is probably correct, but I think checking the existence of a slash is surer. Let me elaborate:

Arxiv.org uses two formats, the old one, and the new (i.e. current). In the old, eprint=<class>/<numbers>, and in the new, eprint=<numbers>, or more precisely, <YYMM.numbers>. Since it's two-digit YY, it'll sometime change, and that's the subtlety I indicated above.

In the old format (which had been used for papers submitted by some 2007), you shouldn't add the "class", or if one is already present, class should be deleted. -- Teika kazura (talk) 02:04, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Great, thanks, I'll implement this in the next major update – hopefully in the next few weeks. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 07:02, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thank you, you have been very helpful to me as a new user and contributor. Tonythetiger89 (talk) 16:29, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Bot makes changes resulting in unbalanced braces

Status

Resolved

Reported by

EEng (talk) 02:33, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

{{thinsp}} manually entered by human here [15], turned by bot into {{T.} (complete with unbalanced braces as shown here)

Relevant diffs/links

[16]

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

Look, I'm sure I'll get an earful about why the hell I even bothered to add {{thinsp}} ( thinsp is a "thin space"). But whether or not that was a good idea, the bot certainly shouldn't do what it did -- no doubt this wanders into an unanticipated corner case in some regex.

Interesting. The xml from pubmed for that cited source shows:

<ArticleTitle>"No longer Gage": frontal lobe dysfunction and emotional changes.</ArticleTitle>

That should give |title="No longer Gage": frontal lobe dysfunction and emotional changes. as the value to be automagically inserted by the bot. Your version substituted  &squot; for the leading ", presumably to improve legibility, but breaking the automatic check against published metadata. I note that of the published works citing that paper, many mangle the quotation marks in even stranger ways. This may be a special-enough case to be worth avoiding cite journal entirely, manually writing the cite doi subpage instead. The problem only arises when the title properly begins with a double quotation mark, invoking the substitution of the single... LeadSongDog come howl! 22:03, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't think you're understanding the problem -- nothing to do with the title field. I put {{thinsp}} in 4 fields [17] -- last1, last2, last3, title; also, in title I changed double quotes to single quotes. The bot came in after me and, er, adjusted [18]. In last1, 2, 3 it turned {{thinsp}} into {{T.} (with only one brace on the right!), but it left the {{thinsp}} in the title field alone.

Later [19] I tried using &thinsp; instead of {{thinsp}} and the bot left that alone. So there's something about the {{thinsp}} which is confusing it -- except in the title field!

But your comments raise some interesting points:

1. Surely there are plenty of times that a title contains double-quotes; since the bot knows that the title itself will be enclosed in double-quotes by the cite template, it ought to be made smart enough to change the doubles to singles, and even (as I did manually) add a thinsp at left or right or both as needed. (Whether you want to detect nested quotes in the title and handle them, I leave to you. This well illustrates why the British system of single-inner, double-outer really is better -- under it, to embed a quote within a quote doesn't require "toggling" -- or 'toggling' -- all the inside quotes.)

2. You mentioned "manually writing the cite doi subpage instead". Sure that's fine for some situations, but how to keep the bot from coming in after and fooling with what the human's done? I expected there to be some magic bot_hands_off parameter I could add to the doi cite, but there doesn't seem to be such a thing. (Perhaps in the presence of such a keyword the bot might add, as a <!- -> comment, what it would have put in that field, so a human can judge for himself.)

3. Or, just the fact that a human edited at all might act as an implicit instruction to the bot to keep hands off. In this case, again, the bot might still come in and add a <!- -> comment at the end of fields it "disagrees" with.

4. I realize that (3) above may raise some issues when the source databases the bot is working from update their records i.e. I can imagine that, right now, if an external database makes a spelling correction in a bibliographic record, the bot might propagate that to the doi cite -- if any human intervention blocks the bot permanently, then that cite would never get updated. One way to handle this is the following: any time there's a human edit, the bot comes in and adds a <!- comment to the effect, "Live value is human-supplied. I would have supplied value X." Later, if there's a database update changing one of the field values, the bot looks at that field in the doi cite. If there's no <!- such as I just described, the bot can assume the field was bot-supplied, and therefore it updates the field with the new value from the external database. But if there's a <!- comment, then bot keeps its hands off. Of course, a not-uncommon special case might be that the new value from the external database matches the human-supplied value, because the human knew early that the value was wrong and corrected it. This might actually be worth detecting so the comment can be changed in that case to "Database value finally reflects human-supplied value".)

OK, enough commentary! EEng (talk) 23:24, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

No, I understood that problem in the forenames, I just couldn't identify its source. I've looked at the code, but I can't claim to have much understanding of it. It seems to be buried several layers down in unicode conversions, and PHP isn't my bag. With regards the toggling issue, it strikes me that the proper place for that functionality is in the templates. If that can't be done, then such failing should be documented so that all editors, human or bot, know that they have to pre-toggle the title quotation marks and in what fashion to do so in order to match the template's expectations.

To have the bot keep "hands off", see User:Citation_bot#Stopping the bot from editing. It's pretty simple. However, there's some merit in saying "for cite doi subpages, leave completed templates untouched if they have been human-edited following the bot's initial filling-out". My personal perspective is rather more drastic: eliminate cite doi template subpages entirely. Just subst them. They are a cute-but-bad idea. That seems, however, not to be a widely-held view and I do not really wish to beat a wp:DEADHORSE. LeadSongDog come howl! 14:53, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing me to this other documentation (and see #Pointing_user_to_various_documentation_source. But I'm puzzled. At User:Citation_bot#Stopping_the_bot_from_editing it says

If the bot is erroneously adding a DOI, author, etc to a citation, and you want to stop it adding the data again, you need to put a comment in place of the appropriate parameter – because the bot will not overwrite existing data.

Well, clearly the bot will overwrite existing data -- maybe it should read will not overwrite a value that contains a comment??? I'm gonna try that experiment.

EEng (talk) 22:45, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

FYI: Any HTML entity is currently rendered without parsing in the COinS metadata:

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000017-QINU`"'<cite id="CITEREFStussGowHetherington1992" class="citation journal cs1">Stuss, D.&thinsp;T.; Gow, C.&thinsp;A.; Hetherington, C.&thinsp;R. (1992). "&thinsp;'No longer gage': Frontal lobe dysfunction and emotional changes". ''Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology''. <b>60</b> (3): 349–359. [[doi (identifier)|doi]]:[https://doi.org/10.1037%2F0022-006X.60.3.349 10.1037/0022-006X.60.3.349]. [[PMID (identifier)|PMID]]&nbsp;[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1619089 1619089].</cite><span title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.jtitle=Journal+of+Consulting+and+Clinical+Psychology&rft.atitle=%26thinsp%3B%27No+longer+gage%27%3A+Frontal+lobe+dysfunction+and+emotional+changes&rft.volume=60&rft.issue=3&rft.pages=349-359&rft.date=1992&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1037%2F0022-006X.60.3.349&rft_id=info%3Apmid%2F1619089&rft.aulast=Stuss&rft.aufirst=D.%26thinsp%3BT.&rft.au=Gow%2C+C.%26thinsp%3BA.&rft.au=Hetherington%2C+C.%26thinsp%3BR.&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fen.wikipedia.org%3AUser+talk%3ACitation+bot" class="Z3988"></span><span class="cs1-maint citation-comment"><code class="cs1-code">{{[[Template:cite journal|cite journal]]}}</code>: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list ([[:Category:CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list|link]])</span> --  Gadget850 ^talk 15:18, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

For those of us not steeped in this corner of WP: what is the significance of that? What is this metadata fed to? Is it different if a template e.g. { { thinsp } } is used instead? EEng (talk) 22:45, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

• {{thinsp}} is inconsistent with the Cite Doi formatting requirements. If you wish to use this template, then unfortunatly you won't be able to use Cite Doi - using Cite Journal in an article will be fine, and the bot won't alter the forename punctuation. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 17:34, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Why should the bot ever edit more than once?

Excuse me, but can you point to the "Cite doi formatting requirements" you're talking about? And assuming, for the sake of argument, that I introduced something to the cite that isn't normal or acceptable for some obscure reason, does that really justify the bot's completely screwing up the cite by causing the braces to become unbalanced? I have taken the liberty of removing the "invalid" tag. And please don't archive discussion threads until others have a chance to comment on the "resolution". EEng (talk) 03:33, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

The requirements are at Template:Cite_doi#Formatting. I've now transcluded them onto the notification that appears on each individual cite doi template (e.g. Template:Cite_doi/10.1037.2F0022-006X.60.3.349). Can you think of anywhere else that should display this text, so that other editors are made aware of them? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 07:29, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

These formatting "requirements" appear to be rules meant to lend uniformity to otherwise arbitrary choices (e.g. "Smith, John Albert" vs. "Smith, J.A." vs. "Smith, J. A."), which is really something that the editors concerned can work out among themselves. And even assuming that there's some good reason for cites to be restricted to this format, that doesn't explain why the bot goes haywire and messes up the cite completely should a cite, for whatever reason, not conform to it.

Look, what I don't understand is why the bot needs to ever touch a template more than once? A template appears that's just a bare doi (or pmid, or whatever). The bot fills it in. Why can't that be the end of it, as far as the bot is concerned? If, after that, editors have their reasons for adjusting the template, why should the bot keep jumping back in?

If there's something I'm missing in offering the above reasoning, please explain. EEng (talk) 00:45, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

1) To update the citation 2) To enforce formatting standards 3) To fix mistakes 4) etc... Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:22, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

1) Can you give an example of a citation being updated? I'm not certain I understand what you mean (though I can guess some possibilities).

2) As to "enforcing formatting standards", I addressed that above. Why should the bot override the judgment of human editors?

3) How does the bot recognize a "mistake"? See 2) above.

EEng (talk) 01:46, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

1) I don't feel like digging through thousands of edits to find an example. Examples of updates are adding arxiv/Bibcodes/DOI/JSTOR/... identifiers as they become available. (See [20] for an example from Bibcode Bot.) 2) Because "the judgment of human editors" in this case very often means breaking citations. If for example, you want your citation to be in "J. Smith (2009), bla bla bla.", this will clash with every other citations that are in "Smith, J. (2009). bla bla bla." format. The cite doi framework needs to be in that format, otherwise citations cannot be relied upon to produce the expected output. If you don't like this, then simply don't use {{cite doi}} templates and instead use {{cite journal}}. 3) If you change Smith, J. to Jason Smith, this is a mistake. If you put the journal title in the volume parameter, this is a mistake. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:58, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Saying, "if you don't like the way the bot works then don't use it" isn't really helpful -- that would be an excuse for the bot doing all kinds of silly things right and left. (Remember, this thread began because the bot does something it should never do, under any circumstances, which is to leave the source text with unbalanced braces.) The discussion here should be over: What bot behavior is going to be most helpful to the most editors?

I don't see why humans should be any less trustworthy in this context than in any other. No one's saying people should be able to change "Smith, J." to "Jason Smith", but as seen elsewhere on this page ([21], and see also the talk about quotes near the beginning of this thread [22]) there are certainly places where humans know better than the robot. Here [23] we're told that "the bot will not overwrite existing data" -- is that in fact true, and if so what's the exact logic of that? EEng (talk) 06:46, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

<bump> I would really appreciate an answer per above. What I'm looking for is the precise test by which the bot decides whether or not it should overwrite existing data. Or is the code somewhere I can look at it myself? EEng (talk) 13:51, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

<Ahem!> EEng (talk) 00:28, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Here's the Source code (link listed on page User:Citation_bot). The function you are probably interested in is if_null_set(). Do note that I'm currently re-building the bot from the ground up, and that the next major release may (or may not) resolve these problems. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 09:29, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

To save me setting up svn and so on, can you point me to the appropriate module? EEng (talk) 04:57, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Current function: https://code.google.com/p/citation-bot/source/browse/branches/dev/expandFns.php line 1192; Forthcoming function: https://code.google.com/p/citation-bot/source/browse/branches/dev/objects.php line 206 (in r471; function Template::add_if_new).

Automatic addition of authors beyond original nine puts doi param in a funny place in the source code

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 526

Reported by

– Jonesey95 (talk) 01:56, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Cosmetic (source only; render is fine)

What happens

params for authors 10+ are added after the doi param

What should happen

bot puts all author params together, before the doi

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3ACite_doi%2F10.1002.2Fana.10755&diff=569659987&oldid=467121872

Replication instructions

Find a cite doi template (listed under C in the alphabet) in Category:Pages_using_citations_with_old-style_implicit_et_al. and use citation expander to expand it, then look at the source

We can't proceed until

A specific edit to the bot's code is requested below.

Requested action from maintainer

place added author/first/last params after the existing nine author params but before the doi param

Here's a diff that shows what I mean. The original citation, created by an older version of the bot, limited the authors to nine (I understand why this happened). With the revised bot's wonderful ability to add more authors, using the citation expander tool to add more authors adds "last10" before the doi, then "first10" and the rest of the author params after the doi. It looks strange when you edit the template, though of course it renders just fine. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:56, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Citation expander failed to add last names

Status

NOT FIXED ? Fixed in GitHub Pull 449 (but untested) - still needs work after testing  Fixed in GitHub Pull 526?

Reported by

– Jonesey95 (talk) 02:13, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

In this particular case, citation expander gadget failed to pull last names of authors beyond author 9

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3ACite_pmid%2F607500&diff=569661542&oldid=480588886

Replication instructions

revert the diff and try to expand again using citation expander gadget

We can't proceed until

Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

Requested action from maintainer

Test it to see if it's a citation bot bug or a problem with the XML in PubMed or something else.

I used citation expander on about ten existing cite pmid templates with just nine authors, expecting to gain the remaining authors, and this is the only one that this happened to. The other ones expanded just fine. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:13, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Another example, but different: This one added only first names. Is this cite pmid specific? I did maybe 100 cite doi expansions and did not notice this problem. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:15, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Here's another one, a cite doi expansion. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:18, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Here's another one. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:32, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Here's another one. This one also added the first names in a unusual order. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:41, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

This seems to happen when there is an "author" parameter. When this happens and I remove the "author" parameter, replacing it with a blank "last1 =" and "first1 =" and run the citation expander again, it usually works fine. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:47, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Here's an example of this or a similar problem still happening. I thought that 449 was in production, but it looks like I'm still using 443. If you look at the subsequent history, you can see the manual changes I made to clean it up so that citation bot could fill it in cleanly. I don't know why this workaround works, but it does. It seems to happen only when something is unusual in the first author's parameter(s), like when "author" exists or "last" and "first" exist instead of "last1" and "first1". – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:14, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Here's an example of this happening with a cite pmid template, with citation bot r458. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:38, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Think this is fixed in r526? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:44, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Citation expander gadget blanked an existing cite doi template

Status

Resolved

Reported by

– Jonesey95 (talk) 02:49, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Deleterious

What happens

citation expander gadget blanked a cite doi template

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3ACite_doi%2F10.1144.2FGSL.SP.2006.258.01.10&diff=569666059&oldid=498341433

We can't proceed until

Operator debug needed

-->

Thanks for the report; I'll aim to fix this in the next major release. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 05:57, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Here's another one, for testing with the bug fix. This has happened to me only twice on a few hundred expanded cite doi templates, so it's a corner case, to be sure. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:00, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

"Processing page" link to cite doi template links to WP main page

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 448

Reported by

– Jonesey95 (talk) 13:37, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Cosmetic/Inconvenience

What happens

The output page from the bot shows "Processing page Template:Cite doi/XXXX" at the top, and it looks like it should be a link to the template, but it's a link to the WP main page.

What should happen

The link should go to the template. The link at the bottom, which is produced only if there are changes (could you display the link at the bottom even for unchanged cite templates as a workaround?), works fine.

Replication instructions

Expand any cite doi template.

We can't proceed until

Operator:

Requested action from maintainer

Make the link connect to the expected page.

This has been a bug as long as I have been using citation bot (3-4 months). The link at the top of the output page goes to the WP main page instead of to the template, and if there are no changes to the citation, there is no link to the template at the bottom of the page. The output in question appears to be produced in line 25 of expand.php. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:37, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Null edit?

Status

new bug

Reported by

Imzadi 1979 → 02:57, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience: bot activates saying it is "user-activated", yet I did not actually activate the bot, which clogs my watch list.

What happens

Undesired activation

What should happen

Nothing

Relevant diffs/links

[24]

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

My question is simple: when was this bot approved for this behavior? Specifically, where was it discussed to have the bot run on new FAC nominations? With the US 23 example linked above, nothing visible was changed, but some extra spaces were removed. Is that not a violation of bot policy to only make changes if they'll be visible? Imzadi 1979 → 02:57, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Odd that there's no visible change - not sure what's caused that. You mention that your watchlist is clogged – which implies that this is a widespread problem. Could you give a list of a dozen or so links, please, so that I can work out how to replicate the bug? Note also that you can choose to hide bot edits by clicking the link at the top of your watchlist. Thanks, Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 08:29, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

This missed part of my point: the edit says it was "user activated", but by whom? Apparently the submission of an article to FAC is enough to activate this bot, so I ask where was that behavior approved? Each of my FAC submissions this year has been followed by an edit to the nominated article within the first 24 hours or so, prompting me to check to see if it's a worthless edit like this, or if I need to revert and clean up automated changes made to the citations. All were under the guise of "user activated", yet I did no such thing! Imzadi 1979 → 16:12, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Bot does not display "et al." for articles with more than 30 authors

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 503

Reported by

– Jonesey95 (talk) 12:57, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

Bot fills in up to 30 authors, even when there are more than 30. No indication is provided that the article has more than 30 authors.

What should happen

"et al." should be displayed when there are more than 30 authors.

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cite_doi/10.1016.2Fj.jas.2011.02.030

Replication instructions

expand a citation (like the one linked above) for an article with more than 30 authors.

We can't proceed until

A specific edit to the bot's code is requested below.

Example article containing more than 30 authors. Cite doi template for this article is listed above. I have not looked at the XML at the doi's source to see if 30 authors is a limitation imposed by the article's XML itself, but it seems like a citation bot limit, since it happens with journals all over the place.

One note: This situation has the potential to put us in the same situation we ended up in with the "displayauthors" Lua error that appears on 11,000+ articles that have 9 authors listed in the cite journal template, so the enhancement, if implemented, should be done in a way that avoids splashing a bunch of red text all over the place. Ideally. I think. Or maybe that's what we want, once there is a fix, so that we can run the citation expander on those articles again and get the problem fixed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:57, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

This is a bot error and should be easy to fix. I'll get onto it. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 07:39, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

It looks like this fix results in |displayauthors=30 being set. We might want this to be 29 instead, so that the article shows 29 authors and "et al." instead of exactly 30 authors. For an article with 40 authors, I would want to see some indication in the citation that the article has more than the 30 authors listed in the citation. Am I explaining this clearly? – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:16, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Gotcha. Will implement anon. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 08:14, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Citation bot fails to add authors to a template

Status

new bug

Reported by

– Jonesey95 (talk) 23:55, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

Bot exits the citation expansion process early with "No changes required." message.

What should happen

Citation expander gadget should add authors beyond the existing nine to the template.

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cite_doi/10.1021.2Fjm100395q

Replication instructions

Use the citation expander gadget. Notice the shorter-than-usual output.

We can't proceed until

Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

I've tried to use the citation expander gadget to add remaining authors to this citation, but the bot appears to stop processing and generate a portion of the normal output without adding the authors. It looks like it is finding a graceful way to exit out of the code for some reason, but I don't think it should. I haven't seen this one before. I did note that there are curly braces in the title parameter. I don't know if that causes any problems. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:55, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

And the opposite problem (Last & Author set): http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stomatoporina&diff=570371168&oldid=570371145 Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 09:14, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Ref naming error

Status

Accepted

Reported by

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 08:58, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

Reference named wrongly; future calls to same instance don't pick up on this name and are called ref_, generating red error message.

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Heteractinida&diff=570506944&oldid=570506891

We can't proceed until

Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

Citation bot reports blank page (erroneously, on every cite doi template, every time)

Status

 Fixed new bug

Reported by

– Jonesey95 (talk) 21:00, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience - bot fails to operate

What happens

Bot reports that cite doi template is blank and exits. It was working an hour ago.

What should happen

Bot should expand the template

Relevant diffs/links

https://toolserver.org/~verisimilus/Bot/citation-bot/doibot.php?edit=toolbar&slow=1&user=Jonesey95&page=Template%3ACite_doi%2F10.1073.2Fpnas.0401080101

Replication instructions

Expand any cite doi template using the citation expander gadget

We can't proceed until

Operator: Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

Requested action from maintainer

Try to replicate, undo whatever changed in the last hour or so.

Here's the output I get:

Establishing connection to Wikipedia servers ... Using account Citation bot. Fetching parameter list ... done.
Welcome to Citation Bot
Please wait while the Citation bot processes the page you requested.

Activated by Jonesey95
Expanding 'Template:Cite_doi/10.1073.2Fpnas.0401080101'; will commit edits.
Revision #443
[00:00:00] Processing page 'Template:Cite_doi/10.1073.2Fpnas.0401080101' — edit—history 
 * Looking for bare references... 
 * Tidying reference tags... 
 - No references found.
 - No references found.
----
Blank page. Perhaps it's been deleted?
 ** Blank page retrieved.
 # # # 

End of output
   # # #

– Jonesey95 (talk) 21:00, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

I think it might be related to this change. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:59, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

More info about how to fix here. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:30, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. That cite doi subpage has five URLs.

1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC419578
2. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004PNAS..101.8186C
3. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073%2Fpnas.0401080101
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC419578
5. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15148402

These work, however the adabs and doi URLs don't work if they are reframed to https protocol

1. https://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004PNAS..101.8186C
2. https://dx.doi.org/10.1073%2Fpnas.0401080101

LeadSongDog come howl! 13:45, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

• I don't think this is a bug of this bot. When I use Reflinks, I get the usual output page, but all changes are lost when I then go back to the WP edit window. --Randykitty (talk) 14:19, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

I think it has indeed to do with the change to https. However, I changed my preferences and then tried to login again and then switch to good old http, to try whether the bot would now work, but somehow I stay stuck in https. Darned inconvenient... --Randykitty (talk) 14:26, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

• I've changed the preferences for the bot account (so that the bot doesn't use SSL) and this seems to have fixed the bug that was originally reported. RandyKitty, could you confirm whether it's fixed the bug that you were encountering too? Cheers, Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 07:37, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

I ran into that bug a few times over the last few days, possibly up to a frequency of "always". Now I'm not running into it anymore. So it looks fixed to me. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:38, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

It's fixed for me. Thanks! Time to get back to clearing out Category:Pages using citations with old-style implicit et al. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:38, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

(PS this bot will get to work on that category soon. You are welcome to make a start, but it might be that the bot is faster!) Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:35, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

That is good news. The category had over 12,000 entries a couple of weeks ago. By focusing on expanding the cite doi templates, I have reduced it to a little under 8,000. The remaining articles will fit into a few general types:

1. About 500 {{cite pmid}} templates and articles that incorporate them. See above for a bug that adds first names but not last names and appears to be limited to cite pmid templates. That should be fixed before a bot processes the cite pmid templates.
2. About 800 {{cite doi}} templates for articles with exactly 9 authors, or for articles that will not expand beyond 9 authors for some reason. I recommend adding |displayauthors=29 to these citations so that they will show all authors and remove the error message. I recommend a value of 29 instead of 9 or some other value because the 9-author articles should show all authors, and the unexpanded templates may eventually be able to expand to more than 9 authors, up to the current apparent limit of 30.
3. Articles that are displaying the error but that are not using {{cite doi}}. Many of these articles do not use the same author citation format as the citation bot, and they should not be "corrected" to do so. For example, if authors are shown as "Smith M" or "Smith, M" as opposed to the citation bot's "Smith, M.", the bot should not necessarily change that formatting. Adding the displayauthors param to these citations might be a good fix, but it could also be problematic if the article has a consistent citation format that shows a certain number of authors.
4. Articles that incorporate newly-error-free {{cite doi}} templates but that need a null edit to be removed from the category. I don't know how many of these there might be.
5. Edge cases. Lots of edge cases. I'll be happy to help clean those up.

I welcome your thoughts. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:12, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Understood! I hope to have a draft version of the new script together within the next fortnight and would welcome your input when I have made some trial edits. I'll keep you posted. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 16:05, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Bad link in report window

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:36, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Annoyance

What happens

When the bot posts the report, it starts something like

Please wait while the Citation bot processes the page you requested. Activated by Headbomb Expanding 'OPERA_experiment'; will commit edits. Revision #442 [00:00:00] Processing page '[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ OPERA_experiment]' — [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=OPERA_experiment&action=edit edit]—[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=OPERA_experiment&action=history history]

What should happen

Instead, it should be something like

[00:00:00] Processing page '[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPERA_experiment OPERA experiment]' — [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=OPERA_experiment&action=edit edit] — [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=OPERA_experiment&action=history history]

Note the first link (and the spacing of the emdashes).

Replication instructions

Start the bot on pretty much any page and you'll see it.

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

Requested action from maintainer

Fix the bot so it displays report like detailed in the "What should happen" section?

Hasn't this been fixed in the latest version? How are you activating the bot? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 09:30, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

AFIAK that bug's been there for years. I just never bothered to report it. I'm activating the bot through a toolbox link (which would look something like http://toolserver.org/~verisimilus/Bot/DOI_bot/doibot.php?edit=toolbar&slow=1&user=Headbomb&page=Journal_of_the_Chemical_Society%2C_Faraday_Transactions). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:43, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

That link looks like it's going to the Beta version running r442 (where the fix hasn't propogated yet). Try the non-beta link (substitute citation-bot for DOI_bot in the URL). The beta link'll be fixed in a while. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:32, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

I think clicking the "jump the queue" link when you create a brand new cite doi template results in this error. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:57, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Fixed the link in Template:Cite doi. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:34, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Odd whitespace characters

Status

Accepted

Reported by

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 09:06, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

What happens

...

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Co-option_%28biology%29&diff=571755892&oldid=567921155

We can't proceed until

A specific edit to the bot's code is requested below.

More than one of author1= and last= specified

Status

new bug

Reported by

K7L (talk) 16:30, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

inconvenience

What happens

Some google book entries have both first/last name and author fields populated.

What should happen

This should be either/or - don't populate both as "More than one of author1= and last= specified" generates a warning in the cite book / cite journal template.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mathematical_joke&diff=571782140&oldid=571781589

Replication instructions

[25] with the page in whatever state it was in before the aforementioned edit.

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

I mistakenly posted my experience of this bug in another section, but this diff demonstrates the problem again. I'm not sure what consensus needs to occur for the solution. If "author" is specified, shouldn't the bot just refrain from adding "last" or "first" parameters? Azaghal of Belegost (talk) 18:39, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Pipes in an article title

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 504

Reported by

Mackensen (talk) 03:32, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience: Humans must occasionally make immediate edits to clean up after the bot

What happens

Article titles with a pipe (|) symbol are broken up, because the pipe symbol is interpreted as the start of a new parameter.

What should happen

A pipe encountered during processing should be escaped with {{!}}.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3ACite_doi%2F10.1016.2FB0-12-227055-X.2F00008-0&diff=570878019&oldid=554119456

We can't proceed until

A specific edit to the bot's code is requested below.

Can you suggest a protocol by which the bot can determine whether the pipe is genuinely part of the title paramete (so should be escaped as you suggest), or whether a user has mis-typed the following parameter — for example title = All about things | journal - Journal of Science or title = All about things | <!-- url = http://not.working.com -->

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 09:32, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps the OP should have said "A pipe encountered in a datum retrieved from an external source must be escaped with {{!}} before adding it to the template as a parameter value." Seen this way there's no ambiguity. EEng (talk) 17:13, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, now I understand the problem. Will do! Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 07:35, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Institutional author formatted as "lastname, firstname" ("Association, American Bar" instead of "American Bar Association")

Status

new bug

Reported by

TJRC (talk) 15:37, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

Institutional author such as "American Bar Association" formatted as "Association, American Bar," as though it were a human name;

What should happen

use author= or publisher= instead of author1/first1

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Henry_P._Chandler&diff=prev&oldid=572496550

We can't proceed until

Input from editors

Requested action from maintainer

Correct bot to avoid first/last name formatting for institutional authors

Please suggest a method by which the bot can distinguish institutional from human authors. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 07:32, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Citations are not expanded based on Google Books URL or ISBN

Status

new bug

Reported by

Drmies (talk) 19:03, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

citations are not expanded based on Google Books URL or ISBN

What happens

nothing

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Edit summary weirdness

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:19, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Improvement: The bot would be much better if ...

What happens

Only changes last2, but says it changed last2, last3, last4, last5, and last6

What should happen

Only mention what actually changed.

Relevant diffs/links

[26]

Replication instructions

Run it on the same page with the old revision?

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

Requested action from maintainer

Fix it?

Bot should add "|displayauthors=29" to 9-author and 30-author citations processed using the bot

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 503

Reported by

– Jonesey95 (talk) 21:17, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Improvement

What happens

Citations for journal articles with exactly nine authors display a Lua error message. Citations for journal articles with thirty or more authors are created with exactly thirty authors but do not display "et al.", even if the original article has more than thirty authors. Both situations are undesirable.

We can't proceed until

Maintainer: A specific edit to the bot's code is requested above.

Requested action from maintainer

Both types of citations should have "|displayauthors=29" added so that the 9-author citations will show all authors with no errors, and 30-author citations will show 29 authors and then "et al." to indicate that there are more than 29 authors.

I think I've thought this one all the way through. There may be some nuance that I'm missing. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:17, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Citation Bot 2 is sweeping through and creating new citations with this same error, requiring more human intervention, even though this bug was reported four months ago. Is this any easy fix? – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:04, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

In rev 503, I have made it so that any addition of 'last9' or 'author9' will add 'display-authors = 29'. Not the most elegant solution, but will this patch the hole? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 21:47, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! That should work fine. Is there a link where I can test a relatively stable beta version on existing cite doi templates? – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:42, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure about stable, but the development version of the bot is at http://tools.wmflabs.org/citations-dev/. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 22:30, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I tried to run a page through the bot (r506) at that page, but I received an error: Fatal error: Call to undefined function expand() in /data/project/citations-dev/public_html/doibot.php on line 105. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:59, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Bot should add more than four editors and add displayeditors=29 if there are exactly 4 editors

Status

new bug / feature request (two related features in one request)

Reported by

– Jonesey95 (talk) 23:49, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Improvement

What happens

Bot limits editors to four first names and four last names.

What should happen

Bot should retrieve all editors and add "displayeditors=29" parameter if there are exactly four editors.

Replication instructions

Run the citation expander on a citation that has four editors listed but more than four editors in the original work. Here's one example: Template:Cite_doi/10.1007.2F978-0-387-78705-3 (revert the citation to four editors and then run the bot on it).

We can't proceed until

Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

Requested action from maintainer

Remove four-editor limit from bot code and add "displayeditors=29" to citations with exactly four authors.

The bot should add "displayeditors=29" if there are exactly four editors to avoid the Lua error described for exactly 9 authors above. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:49, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Bracketbot

Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to Mesoionic may have broken the syntax by modifying 1 "[]"s. If you have, don't worry: just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.

List of unpaired brackets remaining on the page:

• |title=Structure of the mesoionic compound N-\1-methyl-3-(p-tolyl)-4-(1,2,3-triazolio)]acetamidate (MMTAT), C12H14N4O |year=1983 |last1=Papageorgiou |first1=M. |last2=Kokkou |first2=S. C.

Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 12:56, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

[From the upcoming motion picture Bodice-Ripping Bots.]

"Oh, hi, I'm Citationbot. Wow, thanks. I've been looking everywhere for that other bracket! So you're that big strong Bracketbot I've heard so much about. Gosh, you look like you must be 64-bit -- such big quads! -- a complex instruction set with hardcoded ABS. Why don't you come into my domain? That's not my usual protocol, but a girl feels so secure when a guy has so much onboard cache. I wasn't expecting to host, so pardon my open proxy -- a bit RISCé, perhaps, but just something I wear around the server farm. Virtual mammary memory? -- oh no, these dual cores are absolutely real! All native configuration -- no upgrades at all. Should I slip into a more user-friendly interface -- something GUI, perhaps? Oh, you prefer command-line? -- kinky! ..."

Later: "Oh, Bracketbot! I can't believe your high refresh rate. Lucky I'm in protected mode so you won't have to worry about any viruses! My husband has a really short cycle time and his puny little floppy drive is subject to frequent hardware failures, so sometimes I have to use manual simulation! And I've never had 10 gigabytes of hard drive before! Let's FTP! ... Oh god! I'm downloading ..."

You are an evil, evil man... :)Naraht (talk) 15:54, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Personally I think "wicked" has a more lofty ring to it, but I'll take "evil". Thanks! EEng (talk) 18:22, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Get a carrier hotel, you two? K7L (talk) 00:06, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Brilliant! You will feature prominently in my Oscar acceptance speech. EEng (talk) 00:20, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

 Done. While you two bots were flirting, I fixed the bracket problem. Carry on. Don't let me interrupt. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:04, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

That's OK. They're both configured for quick reboot. EEng (talk) 20:27, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Hard as this may be to believe, someone seems to have completely missed this point of all this. [27] EEng (talk) 20:48, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Could someone clarify whether this is a bug and if so what action is required? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 09:49, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't know whether it's a bug or GIGO. The bot inserted the journal article title as "... N-\ ..." instead of "... N-[ ...". The journal article in question is [28]. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:34, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

First names added without last names

Status

new bug

Reported by

Trappist the monk (talk) 03:06, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

See this edit. The bot seems to have forgotten to add |lastn= parameters to match all of the |firstn= parameters that it added. The bot added |author1= and |last= which are aliases of each other and as such, when present simultaneously in a citation, cause an error. I have reverted.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 03:06, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

A similar bug was reported above and a fix was attempted. It appears to have failed to fix the problem, which appears to manifest itself when |author is already present. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:04, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

There are other things wrong. The robot uses |pages= when it should use |page= and occasionally adds extraneous text: |journal=Astronomical Journal (ISSN 0004-6256). The ISSN belongs in |issn=. The title of the journal is The Astronomical Journal. And too much white space. I have fixed one of the mangled citations.

Not a bug but I wonder if long long citations like those in Neil deGrasse Tyson shouldn't be named and moved into {{reflist}} as part of |refs=. It gets them out of the article text so makes reading in the edit window easier. I've moved the citation that I fixed as an example.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:39, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Race condition with page-move?

Status

new bug

Reported by

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:47, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

Bot writes out a page over a redirect left over from a page move that is dated one minute earlier

What should happen

Bot realizes there was an intervening edit and handles the situation properly or at least gracefully

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Christopher_Morris_%28News_Presenter%29&action=history

Replication instructions

Get "lucky" with well-timed page-moves and bot-executions

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

Requested action from maintainer

Decide how to handle it then make necessary code changes

Are you activating the bot yourself, or is the bot jumping in and editing your article after you save it?

I believe that this is a page caching problem that exists for all quick-succession edits, not just edits by Citation Bot. I have experienced it when doing a manual edit of a cite doi template, followed a few seconds later by running Citation Bot using the "Expand citations" gadget in my Toolbox. The bot edits the previous version, ignoring my manual edits. Let's see if I can find it.... Maybe bugzilla:46014, and it looks like a patch has been developed for the MediaWiki software, presumably to be deployed at some future date. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:08, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

The edit summary in the diff above says "user activated" so I assume that's the case. Even of the bot can't detect a race condition as it is happening, it can go back and detect that a race condition MIGHT have occurred and either undo its edit or, if that fails (perhaps due to another intervening edit) notify the editors possibly-conflicting edits so they can straighten things out by hand. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 04:23, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Removes AfC submission template appearing after reflist template

Status

new bug

Reported by

Arthur goes shopping (talk) 13:36, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

Bot deletes "AFC submission" template occurring after "reflist" template in pages under Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/ ... this "unsubmits" a draft article, potentially leaving the article submitter (very likely a new user) unaware of what has happened or what they should do about it - they are likely to assume their submission is still waiting for review or has just been ignored

Relevant diffs/links

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3AArticles_for_creation%2FThe_Morris_Quinlan_Experience&diff=576919208&oldid=576919181
• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/KU6&diff=prev&oldid=577270354
• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/National_Spring_Football_League&diff=prev&oldid=577284792

Replication instructions

Create duplicate references in an AfC submission waiting to be reviewed

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

Bot recreates AfC submissions

Status

new bug

Reported by

Technical 13 (talk) 14:05, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

Bot automagically recreates new AfC submissions of pages that were approved and moved to article space, apparently ignoring an edit conflict warning.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_creation/Growth_factor_receptor_inhibitor&diff=prev&oldid=577287780

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

Organochloride bad edit: spurious lastn parameters added

Status

new bug

Reported by

Anomalocaris (talk) 15:08, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

You added lastn parameters that were redundant to authorn parameters

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Organochloride&diff=574532747&oldid=543906824

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

This bug is similar to one reported above. The citation bot sometimes has trouble with citations when "author" parameters are present. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:14, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Citation bot 458 fails to copy accented characters

Status

new bug

Reported by

– Jonesey95 (talk) 15:44, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience: Humans must occasionally make immediate edits to clean up after the bot

What happens

Bot should copy a name like "Röser" correctly, but instead it writes "r�Ser". I have created many citations with the bot and have seen it copy accented characters correctly, so I don't know what's different in this case.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Cite_doi/10.1051.2F0004-6361:20000064&oldid=577855232

Replication instructions

See the link above. Try to create a cite doi template from the above doi, or maybe one from the same source.

We can't proceed until

Operator: Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

I'm wondering if this might be related to this edit [29] recently where the bot de-accented the characters from some names (I don't know if this is correct) but also completely lost the vowel in Guzmán, changing it to Guzmn. Metadox (talk) 04:46, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Author was already present

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 520

Reported by

Redrose64 (talk) 18:25, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

Fourth author added, using |author4=Van Den Hoek Ostende LW - but it was already present, in slightly different form, as |last4=Hoek Ostende |first4=L. W.

What should happen

Modify either of the existing parameters, don't add one that is an alias of |last4=

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Cite_doi/10.1007.2Fs00114-012-0882-8&diff=prev&oldid=577986353

We can't proceed until

Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

Requested action from maintainer

Don't add authors that are already present

This is not a new error. To my certain knowledge it has come up many times before. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:25, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Again, and again. Why should I not block the bot right now? --Redrose64 (talk) 14:44, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Because the error is  Fixed in GitHub Pull 520 (which will shortly be rolling out to all users). Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 17:14, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Bot added incorrect last name, failed to add many author names

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 490

Reported by

– Jonesey95 (talk) 03:05, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience: Humans must occasionally make immediate edits to clean up after the bot

What happens

Bot added a "last=" parameter when "last1=" was already present, and the value inserted into "last=" is not correct. Also, the bot failed to enter the remaining authors.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Asperger_syndrome&diff=578487485&oldid=577859052

We can't proceed until

Operator: Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

I suspect bad data on the far end. Also see my attempt to create a cite doi template for the same article. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:05, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm, perhaps the article PMID 10638459 is being conflated with the subsequent Erratum, which is mentioned in the pubmed record. I won't bother commenting on Springer's idea that readers should pay to read an erratum on something they themselves published in error. LeadSongDog come howl! 04:17, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Resolved

Bot pointlessly changed commented-out access dates, made them all the same

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 520

Reported by

Wasted Time R (talk) 12:30, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Deleterious: Human-input data is deleted or articles are otherwise significantly affected. Many bot edits require undoing.

-->

What happens

Article has some commented-out access dates, in various forms and with all different dates. Bot changes them all to "<!-- accessdate=2007-08-19 -->", thus losing the original information such as it is.

What should happen

If something is commented out, just leave it alone.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mitt_Romney&diff=578845924&oldid=576704597

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

Resolved

Childbirth Diff erroneous text inserted

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 489?

Resolved

Reported by

MrBill3 (talk) 02:19, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Deleterious: Human-input data is deleted or articles are otherwise significantly affected. Many bot edits require undoing.

What happens

comment, "redundant with name of website Childbirth Connection" repeated inserted

Relevant diffs/links

[30]

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

It looks like all comments in references were replaced with the same text. I reverted the whole edit.

Perhaps related to above bug report. In each case, the inserted text was copied from hidden text found as the value of a parameter in a citation template. It was copied over similar hidden texts found as the value of a parameter in a citation template. LeadSongDog come howl! 03:54, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Please leave comments in cite templates alone!

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 505?

Reported by

Wasted Time R (talk) 03:57, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Deleterious

What happens

Could you please, please, please tell the bot to stop making changes to comments within cite templates. Here is a case where in three different places it replaces a simple comment with a large amount of unrelated text. It is also doing meaningless whitespace churn which makes the diffs even harder to read. Here is another edit where it took away a valuable comment about an alternate source that I had. If the bot sees a comment, just leave it alone!! I and others have complained about this comment botching above, but nothing seems to be happening.

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

Assumed to be fixed in r505. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 16:44, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

"number" to "issue" bug

Status

new bug

Reported by

Jason Quinn (talk) 03:52, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Deleterious: Human-input data is deleted or articles are otherwise significantly affected. Many bot edits require undoing.

What happens

Bot changes the number parameters to issue parameters in cite templates.

What should happen

This should not be done. Semantic information is lost. Some journals use number instead of issue and an editor may choose one over the over on purpose. Using the proper naming aids people in finding the articles. Using improper naming is adds unnecessary confusion. The number parameter is a proper alias of issue and is not deprecated. There is no mandate to change these in a systematic manner.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fahrenheit_451&diff=581596840&oldid=581596226

We can't proceed until

Reporter

Requested action from maintainer

rip out the code causing this change. It's ruining human input.

I understand number to be a synonym of issue. Please link to a case where the different parameter name produces different output. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:37, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

I have just noticed that the bot is blocked based on this report. This seems like a heavy-handed approach. Could the bot be unblocked until community consensus is reached? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:52, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

AFAIK the bot isn't blocked, and hasn't been since 2 June 2013. Here's the log; the last blocker was me, on 28 May 2013; and that block was lifted by somebody else five days later. However, it's clear from the subsequent reports on this page that the reasons that I blocked the bot have not all been resolved. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:33, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry - to clarify - I referred to account Citation bot 1. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 22:29, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Let's ping Jason Quinn (talk · contribs) then. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:48, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi. Yes, the output is identical but some journals use "number" and some use "issue" and a user has presumably chosen one over the other for a reason. (As I had with the example URL I gave.) If "issue" were always the best thing to use, there'd be no point in having "number" as an alias. Having issue vs number correct can be a boon to focusing on the correct journal, especially with medical journals where they often have very similar titles. Having it wrong introduces an air of uncertainty. So I think the case for doing nothing, clearly outweighs the case for changing the parameter for uniformity purposes.

As for my blocking of Citation bot 1, although I haven't used any of the citation bots, I'm wondering if all versions of this it ought to be blocked because the documentation and functionality have major issues. Take a look at the edit summary in the example link I gave in the bug report. 1) there's a dangling pipe character, 2) there's a confusing bot link that even more confusingly points to a confusing shortcut that leads to a use page, 3) the edit summary doesn't even match the work that's been done. That's a very bad edit summary. I don't know if those things have been fixed in newer versions or how much of the edit summary is due to user sloppiness, but any bot leading to edit summaries like that needs re-examination in my book. If all of it cannot be explained away by user sloppiness, it's the bot's problem. WORSE, the documentation, especially for bot shutdown, for this collection of bots is atrocious! It's completely unclear WHICH bot to shutdown in the case of problems. At least in some (if not all) cases, there's no way to determine which bot is responsible for which edits. I followed the instructions as close as possible but I have no idea if I shutdown the correct bot in the example link case. In my opinion, this entire system of bots needs he documentation completely revamped with a focus on a clear and precise organization and wording. It's totally unclear to me how the documentation for this group of bots is organized and how User:Citation bot relates to User:Citation bot 1 through User:Citation bot 9 (which doesn't even have a user page). Heck, the shutdown page only lists User:Citation bot and bots 1 through 4. What is going on here? This whole situation is a absolute confusing mess to decipher. Users and admins should not have to waste days just to figure out what the story is with a bot.

Lastly, from the other messages on this bot's talk pages, it's clear that I am not the only one rather annoyed with these bots. Martin, I'm worried that there's a bit of a problem with your view of bots. Given the great damage a malfunctioning bot can do in a short period of time, our approach to bots is very conservative. The whole bot approval procedure is designed such that there's community consensus needed FOR the edits a bot makes. Users should be encouraged to shutdown bots if there may be a genuine problem; asking for community consensus to stop a bot from making questionable edits is sort of backwards. Where is the consensus to make number to issue changes in the first place? I quick perusal of (all 9!) bot approval requests did not find this as a stated goal bot task. (It kind of rankles me the wrong way that so much onus is on the user to learn exactly what the bots are approved to do. Each bot's user page should have a clear list of concise tasks it is allowed to do.) Assuming I am not overlooking this as an approved functionality (link please), it means that the bot (bots?) are in violation WP:Bot policy. As I recall I quickly searched for this feature approval back when I blocked the bot too (because it would have strongly opposed this task for the bot). All in all, and I'm sorry for sounding harsh, I just feel like this bot not being maintained as well as it should.

PS Again, please forgive any false assumptions I have made about the bots, as I haven't used them myself and don't know how they work. Point out any misunderstanding I have but also try to be charitable in understanding my general point of view (for instance over the quality of the documentation) rather than dismissing my whole view on the basis of a minor false premise. Jason Quinn (talk) 01:41, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

'number' is not a documented parameter in Template:Cite Journal. It is difficult to argue that the bot is 'breaking' anything by replacing an undocumented parameter (which is retained to make life easier for editors) with a documented parameter.

Perhaps there is a case to introduce a 'number' parameter to Cite Journal, in which case I would recommend that you put forward the case there. You may wish to address the following questions: If the distinction between 'number' and 'issue' is useful, then why is it not made in the formatted output? Can you give a (real life) example of journals being distinguished in this way, perhaps in the reference section of a journal article, or in a library catalogue? If two journals have similar names, isn't the ISSN much more useful to distinguish between them than what they call their parts?

Incidentally, if you can give a list of journals whose names are confusing, it would be easy to modify the bot to specify an ISSN for these journals – which in my view could provide a more prominent and useful distinction than something readers can only discover if they edit the page and find and decipher the original reference's code.

The best solution here is to gain consensus before blocking a very widely used tool, particularly if you are unsure of the consequences. In this process, it will be possible to gather community consensus as to whether a particular problem (such as an unclear link!?) provides grounds to block a bot, and if so, which account it is necessary to block.

The bot's currently undergoing a fundamental re-write.

See User:Citation_bot/block for what each bot account does, and a page's edit history to see which account made an edit. See User:Citation_bot#Function for a list of the bot's functions. For what it's worth, the mis-typing of 'issue' as 'number' has in the past been a common mistake (function 2); I suspect that it's only recently that the template was modified to gracefully accommodate this mistake. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 08:26, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Martin. I know you did it to be helpful but please do not chop comments up into pieces to reply to each point. This is completely non-standard for Wikipedia talk pages and ultimately makes it more difficult for later readers to know who wrote what. If you like you can use bullet points to signal each new topic to which you are replying. In order to try to recover the threading, I have reassembled my message and grouped your replies, whose context is still mostly clear with no wording changes.

• As for number, it is in the {{cite journal}} documentation. You are correct it does not currently have a parameter description but it once did (it was introduced with this edit back on 8 September 2010 and stayed around until 6 April 2012 when it was removed but not for any good reason that I know). My argument above does not concern itself with the rendered display of the template so questions indicate you are still missing the point regarding the usefulness of number being used in the template.
• As for blocking the bot, as per WP:BOTISSUE, blocking a bot that is making changes not explicitly approved is a perfectly valid reason to block a bot. It's possible I overlooked the specific approval this bot had to make those "number" to "issue" changes (I did look). Unless that is found, this bot may be in violation of bot policy. Further, any user who suspects a bot is malfunctioning or noticed a new potential bug should be encouraged to block a bot ASAP. I find resistance to this idea, and thinking community consensus is necessary, rather obtuse. If this were a specifically approved bot activity, then it would be a different story but as far as I've found, it's not. For bots community consensus is needed to allow the bot do changes, not to stop it.
• As for the bot functions I have seen most of that material. The problem is the documentation is a pretty disorganized, blob-like, and imprecise. For instance, even the bot functions you linked to above states: "Citation bot only amends the parameters of Citation templates." Well, that's not true. Here is a case where it's changing the parameters not amending them. The bot documentation needs to reflect the precision and clarity of a detail-orientated person. Then, as I pointed out for User:Citation_bot/block, it doesn't even list all the bots. It only lists 5 out of 10. Or maybe it does? I don't know. It's just totally confusing how these bots are related to each other, which is my point. If the bot is being re-written, I suggest it be considered a new bot and these bots retired rather than amending the bot to the ever-growing list here.

Quite frankly I don't understand the mindset at work here. It feels like real problems are being downplayed. This not what I would expect from the author or maintainer of a bot. To quote the Spiderman cliché "with great power comes great responsibility". This is the attitude I prefer to see. Jason Quinn (talk) 22:27, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

The bot needs to support the parameter aliases. Unfortunately the cite template documentation is incomplete so some of these problems/concerns are only discovered during use. Whether we gain from editor use of issue versus number doesn't really matter here as the bot & other cite tools have to support the parameters and aliases either way. Rjwilmsi 09:30, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

The CS1 source lists number as just an alias to issue (as people have already said), but here is the url https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration The distinction of issue and number is only present in the wiki source, not the rendered html, so I think that using that distinction to transfer information is a poor assumption, particularly given that most cite examples already are probably randomly set to issue or number based on author preference and not what the journal does. If their is possible confusion about what is meant, then use pmc, doi, pmid, url, issn, etc. to point the reader to the correct journal. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 02:31, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Please update the documentation at Cite Journal / whereever else so that the correct use of the 'number' and 'issue' parameter is unambiguous. This will make the distinction clear to future editors and flag up the usage to the communities that use the templates. I will then update the bot to follow the documented usage. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:38, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

The |number= parameter is now listed as deprecated. Thus the bot's current behaviour – changing |number= to |issue= – is correct. Having resolved this issue, I am requesting that User:Citation bot 1 is unblocked. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 10:47, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Wait a minute, where and when did |number= get deprecated? As far as Module:Citation/CS1 is concerned, |number= is an active and valid alias for |issue= and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:23, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

There having been no discussion to arrive at a determination to deprecate |number= as an alias of |issue= in CS1 citations, I have undone the change made by Editor Smith609 to Help:Citation_Style_1#Edition_identifiers with this edit.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:18, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

The discussion to deprecate number as an alias of issue can be found on the CS1 talk page at Help_talk:Citation_Style_1#Same_issue_with_.27number.27. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 20:23, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

This user is asking that their block be reviewed:

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

---

Request reason:

Please unblock User:Citation bot 1 (which shares this talk page). The bot was blocked because it was changing 'number' to 'issue'. It was unclear whether this was the correct behaviour. It has now been clarified that 'number' is a deprecated parameter and should be replaced with 'issue.

Notes:

• In some cases, you may not in fact be blocked, or your block has already expired. Please check the list of active blocks. If no block is listed, then you have been autoblocked by the automated anti-vandalism systems. Please remove this request and follow these instructions instead for quick attention by an administrator.
• Please read our guide to appealing blocks to make sure that your unblock request will help your case. You may change your request at any time.

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If you ask the blocking administrator to comment on this request, replace this template with the following, replacing "blocking administrator" with the name of the blocking admin:

{{Unblock on hold |1=blocking administrator |2=Please unblock [[User:Citation bot 1]] (which shares this talk page). The bot was blocked because it was changing 'number' to 'issue'. It was unclear whether this was the correct behaviour. It has now been [[Help:Citation_Style_1#Edition_identifiers|clarified]] that 'number' is a deprecated parameter and should be replaced with 'issue. |3 = ~~~~}}

If you decline the unblock request, replace this template with the following code, substituting {{subst:Decline reason here}} with a specific rationale. Leaving the decline reason unchanged will result in display of a default reason, explaining why the request was declined.

{{unblock reviewed |1=Please unblock [[User:Citation bot 1]] (which shares this talk page). The bot was blocked because it was changing 'number' to 'issue'. It was unclear whether this was the correct behaviour. It has now been [[Help:Citation_Style_1#Edition_identifiers|clarified]] that 'number' is a deprecated parameter and should be replaced with 'issue. |decline = {{subst:Decline reason here}} ~~~~}}

If you accept the unblock request, replace this template with the following, substituting Accept reason here with your rationale:

{{unblock reviewed |1=Please unblock [[User:Citation bot 1]] (which shares this talk page). The bot was blocked because it was changing 'number' to 'issue'. It was unclear whether this was the correct behaviour. It has now been [[Help:Citation_Style_1#Edition_identifiers|clarified]] that 'number' is a deprecated parameter and should be replaced with 'issue. |accept = accept reason here ~~~~}}

For historical reference, here is the edit when Number was added to cite journal as an alias to Issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3ACite_journal&diff=247707432&oldid=242802643 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:00, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Hyphens changed to dashes, breaking date

Status

new bug

Reported by

Redrose64 (talk) 14:43, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

Dates formatted YYYY-MM-DD (with hyphen) are changed to YYYY–MM–DD (with en-dash)

What should happen

Leave it alone

Relevant diffs/links

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Cite_doi/10.1073.2Fpnas.0812355106&diff=next&oldid=582639237

We can't proceed until

Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

Please would you actually fix some of these issues, or must I block the bot again? --Redrose64 (talk) 14:43, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Note that there's a major bot overhaul underway; some volunteers are re-writing it in perl. I hope that this overhaul will address all bugs reported here. In light of this, I'm reluctant to spend too much of my currently limited time fixing bugs in the current PHP implementation. Sorry that this means a period of slight inconvenience. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 08:46, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

That wasn't actually {{para|date||, it read |year=2009-03-17. The correct behavior would have been to change it to |date=2009-03-17. I do not, though, understand why rev 442 is still running after all the subsequent code revisions that @Smith609: has made. LeadSongDog come howl! 15:17, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I'll use my data dump to look for other journal cites with this |date= in |year= problem. That aside, the citationbot could at least ignore an ISO date for endash conversion. Rjwilmsi 17:22, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

That would be useful, especially if there's a ready way to fix them by bot or AWB. I'm not sure there's a clean way for a bot to know that |year=2009-03-17 was intended by the human editor as an ISO date, rather than a (malformed) year range, except by comparison with records in citation databases. Such a date range would, of course, call for the endash. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:48, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Further to the above: the bot also removed diacritics (|last11=Füssel became |last11=Fussel), inserted undesirable spaces (|first11=H.-M. and |first15=J.-P. became |first11=H. -M. and |first15=J. -P.), and capitalised a word which is not normally capitalised (|last15=van Ypersele became |last15=Van Ypersele. There was also no need to remove the linebreaks: that just makes comparison more difficult. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:59, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

(Please see also above at #Abbreviation of first names with dashes.) PNAS calls them Hans-Martin Füssel and Jean-Pascal van Ypersele. Pubmed also has those forenames in its XML, but gives the abbreviation as HM Füssel (neither hyphen nor endash) and JP van Ypersele (ditto). Crossref gives them H.-M. Fussel (no umlat) and J.-P. van Ypersele. So none of the database sources gives the expected abbreviated form H.-M. Füssel we'd want. Should the bot trust Crossref which mangles the surname or Pubmed which just mangles the initials? LeadSongDog come howl! 19:55, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I further note at Template:Cite_doi/doc the instruction about date values (to not provide a day), which would seem to entirely rule out yyyy-mm-dd date values. The two articles which transclude the template, Global_warming and United_Nations_Framework_Convention_on_Climate_Change, both use a mix of "d Month yyyy" and "Month yyyy", so the proper value for the parameter should be |date=March 2009, which would be consistent with other citations in those articles. LeadSongDog come howl! 20:38, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

It's odd to rule out a day - the way I read "Do not specify a day." is "do not use the |day= parameter" (it's been deprecated for years). --Redrose64 (talk) 21:55, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I think the documentation means "in |date= don't give a full date including the day, just give month & year. Or just give year in |year=". Reason being that print journal publications came out weekly/monthly or less often, so issue number & month/year mattered, exact day did not. |day= is long gone so it's not referring to that. However, now we have online-only or online first publishing, I'm particularly thinking of PLoS as a good example, the full date of publication is given on the website and it seems most sensible to give that. So while I agree with where the documentation was coming from, I'm not sure it's fully up to date for online/online first journal publications. Either way a full date or month & year lives in |date=, not |year= and the citation bot needs a bit more validation, year ranges could be checked to match nnnn-nnnn format before endashes applied. Now that we have the CS1 date errors category some cleanup will happen over time. Rjwilmsi 22:37, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I tweaked the doc to clarify the intention refers to the day and month parameters, not the day and month parts of the |date= value. LeadSongDog come howl! 14:20, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Other than a block per WP:3RR, how can I stop the bot doing this? --Redrose64 (talk) 21:39, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Put {{nobots}} on the page should do it. Rjwilmsi 22:22, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Or {{bots|deny=Citation bot}} more specifically. Debresser (talk) 05:39, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Comment in parameter not blocking citation bot from filling it

Status

new bug

Reported by

– Jonesey95 (talk) 18:50, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience: Humans must occasionally make immediate edits to clean up after the bot

What happens

The documentation page says "If the bot is erroneously adding a DOI, author, etc to a citation, and you want to stop it adding the data again, you need to put a comment in place of the appropriate parameter – because the bot will not overwrite existing data." I did so, and the bot removed my comment and filled the parameter.

What should happen

The bot should comply with its documentation, declining to fill a parameter with a comment in it.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3ACite_doi%2F10.1016.2Fj.clinthera.2005.06.002&diff=582774633&oldid=578212614

Replication instructions

Remove my edits and run the bot on the above cite doi template.

We can't proceed until

Operator: Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

Ok, so the bot is now respecting the exclusion protocol's "deny", but the other problem here is that the bot would (if not denied) insert {{{last|Voelker}}} when according to both pubmed and crossref it should be satisfied with {{{last1|Bachert}}} and {{{last5|Voelker}}}. Fortunately in this particular case it doesn't matter, the template is never transcluded. LeadSongDog come howl! 20:37, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

bot reverts CS errors

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 492

Reported by

Quebec99 (talk) 16:15, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Deleterious: Human-input data is deleted or articles are otherwise significantly affected. Many bot edits require undoing.

What happens

error More than one of |author2= and |last2= specified because author and last are the same person, redundant.
| author2 = von Bohlen und Halbach O <br/>| last2 = Von Bohlen Und Halbach | first2 = O. When you remove the redundant author| author2 = von Bohlen und Halbach O

the bot puts it right back!

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3ACite_doi%2F10.1007.2Fs00441-003-0756-7&diff=586057636&oldid=586057467

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

Sorry. Duplicate of "Author was already present" and "Organochloride bad edit: spurious lastn parameters added" above. I agree: stop the bot now. It is causing a lot of work to be undone. Quebec99 (talk) 16:22, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Looking at the transcript, I see

1: Tidy citation and try to expand

- Checking CrossRef for more details [DOItools.php/expand_from_crossref]
+ last2: Von Bohlen Und Halbach (ok)
- Searching PubMed... no results. 1 result found; updating citation
+ author2: von Bohlen und Halbach O
2: DOI already present
3: PMID already present
- Checking PMID 12845521 for more details [DOItools.php/get_data_from_pubmed]
+ author2: von Bohlen und Halbach O
4: Expand citation
- Checking CrossRef for more details [DOItools.php/expand_from_crossref]
+ last2: Von Bohlen Und Halbach (ok)
- No changes since last PubMed search.
5: Formatting and other tweaks
First: Cite Doi formatting [expand.php/expand_text]
+ first2: O.

Clearly the difference in capitalization between Crossref and PubMed is confusing the bot, as it doesn't have a problem with the first author. Will exclude the bot from this record for now.LeadSongDog come howl! 18:24, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

The surname components 'Von ' and 'Und ' are now [r492] always placed in lowercase. Are there any other components that should receive the same treatment? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:32, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Putting two parameters on the same line

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 500

Reported by

Debresser (talk) 02:53, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Cosmetic

What happens

puts date and first name on same line

What should happen

bot should not touch this

Relevant diffs/links

[31]

Replication instructions

easily, see e.g [32]

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

It looks like there is no change in the rendered output or even the content of the citation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:09, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. The change is cosmetic and restricted to the source code. You have to admit that it is not clear what she bot sees to make such useless changes, detracting from the easy overview of the source code. Debresser (talk) 09:41, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, since these are named parameters, leading and trailing whitespace is insignificant - newlines and spaces are both stripped out, so must function identically, so altering one to the other has a cosmetic effect on the page source but no effect on the rendered page. If this bot were using AWB to make such edits, it would have been directed to WP:AWB#Rules of use item 4 a long time ago; probably had AWB access revoked for repeated violation; possibly even blocked for disruptive editing. But the last time that I blocked this bot, there was an outcry. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:47, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

This edit only occurs in Cite Doi / Cite PMID namespace, and occurs for legibility reasons and to comply with formatting guidelines. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:22, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

What formatting guidelines? --Redrose64 (talk) 19:14, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

What formatting guidelines? How does this improve legibility? There are thousands of Cite Doi / Cite PMID pages, so that is no reason not to take care of this. Debresser (talk) 17:28, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Avoid redirect

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 492

Reported by

Debresser (talk) 05:33, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Cosmetic

Improvement: The bot would be much better if ... Cosmetic: The bot modifies appearance (e.g. capitalization) but not content Inconvenience: Humans must occasionally make immediate edits to clean up after the bot Deleterious: Human-input data is deleted or articles are otherwise significantly affected. Many bot edits require undoing. Catastrophical: The bot should stop editing immediately -->

What happens

Bot creates DOI pages with <noinclude>{{template doc|Template:cite_pmid/subpage}}</noinclude>

What should happen

should use {{Documentation|etc.</noinclude>

We can't proceed until

A specific edit to the bot's code is requested below.

Requested action from maintainer

Can be fixed in lines 70, 86 and 91. Don't know if the same code is used in other pages, but I had a look around and didn't see any other occurrences.

Thanks for the detailed report; fixed. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:21, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

"Editor" included when not needed

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 491

Reported by

--Animalparty-- (talk) 01:05, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Deleterious: Human-input data is deleted or articles are otherwise significantly affected. Many bot edits require undoing.

What happens

Journal editor's name gets appended to article citation, which is not standard for scientific article citations.

Replication instructions

Run Citation Bot on certain PLoS citations.

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

When running Citation bot on the citation Pu H, Kobayashi Y, Lü J, Xu L, Wu Y, et al. (2013) An Unusual Basal Therizinosaur Dinosaur with an Ornithischian Dental Arrangement from Northeastern China. PLoS ONE 8(5): e63423. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063423, the corresponding editor's name (Leon Claessens) gets appended, which contradicts convention and the Citation itself. Editors are standard when citing books and encyclopedia, but not in articles such as this. This vexing problem has arisen on other PLoS articles, please modify the code to not insert editor name.

A fresh example (from R487) at this edit, where for PMID 22258985 the value of last1 is incorrectly added as editor1-last and first2 is incorrectly added as editor2-first. LeadSongDog come howl! 17:26, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

As of r491Editor is only added if CrossRef reports no Journal Title. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:19, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Display-authors not recognized

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 490

Reported by

meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 03:42, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Type of bug

Incovenience

What happens

it appends "displayauthors=[number]" after "display-authors=[number]" has already been specified

What should happen

it should recognize them as aliases of one another

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Obesity&diff=prev&oldid=588158812, see line 79 and error generated under references

We can't proceed until

Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

Requested action from maintainer

It seems the bot can recognize "displayauthors", so whatever mechanism does that, to replace it with "displayauthors" OR "display-authors".

I'm pretty sure it's better, just not fixed. See this recent diff. Under line 64, it fails to recognize display-authors=3, and goes on to add displayauthors=30.

A tip: I could be totally wrong about this, but the r490 fix message log lists it in uppercase ("Displayauthors", not "displayauthors"). Case-sensitivity perhaps? meteor_sandwich_yum (talk) 22:38, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Seems like the sensible thing for the bot to do is replace the alias displayauthors with display-authors and be done with it. The alias should be deprecated to avoid creating more such. LeadSongDog come howl! 02:34, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Shut down of tool servers

Please note that the ToolServer, on which the bot is hosted, is scheduled to be decommissioned on Jan 6th. I am in the process of transferring the bot to WikiMedia servers at http://tools.wmflabs.org/citations/. If you can help, please let me know. Otherwise I will endeavour to complete the transition as soon as possible. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 17:32, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

User:Mattsenate has started the process of porting to Labs - see here and here, and we are planning to help with the transition in any way we can. We are also thinking about how to handle references more systematically across the English Wikipedia, other languages and other Wikimedia projects. More via email. -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 22:28, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

The bot is now operational ( I think ) at http://tools.wmflabs.org/citations/. Please let me know if you know of any links that need updating. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 16:13, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

I am getting an error-message saying:

! Function updateBacklog() in expandFns.php requires mysql support, not yet available on WMFlabs servers.
Backlog not updated.
(t) Josve05a (c) 16:23, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

This error is because I've not yet managed to implement MySQL support on the WMF servers; it just means that the bot won't have a record of which pages it has edited recently. As the bot is only running on WP page 'on demand' at the moment, the lack of this record-keeping is not problematic. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 11:45, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Have any of the above bugs been addressed? Just asking so that I know whether to re-report them / continue to work around them.

Bugs not marked as 'resolved' have not been addressed: this is the same instance of the bot, just running on the new host. (The new revision ID reflects changes to the source necessary for the re-homing.) I and some others are currently planning the future of Citation Bot, which will entail a fundamental re-write – so bug reports are useful in that they will help us to ensure that the bugs do not afflict the re-written script, but unfortunately will not be acted upon for a while. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 11:45, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

The "Expand citations" link in the left side Tools list still points to the old tool (for me, at least). – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:30, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: not for me. Have you purged/cleared your cache? (t) Josve05a (c) 16:37, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

I have purged and cleared my cache, but if it's working for you, that's fine. I'm sure mine will catch up.

The "Click here" link in the cite doi doc points to the old tool (again, for me). See the doc in Template:Cite doi/10.1175.2F1520-0493-30.1.19, for example. I have purged that one. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:40, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I've updated this link. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 11:45, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I think that the left-side Tools bar still has the old link, despite what is written above. I got this link by selecting the Citation Expander Gadget in my Preferences. I believe that MediaWiki:Gadget-citations.js loads this Tool, and that page appears to have the old URL.

I also fixed the cite pmid documentation template a few hours ago. It had the old link. There appear to be other links to one of the bot's old addresses in various places, like Template:ISBN. Please do a search for them, as I do not know all of the old addresses. Some of them point to toolserver.org, others point to toolserver.de or something like that. Template:Update_children might also need updating, even though it's not a citation bot link. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:40, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Citation bot 487 created new template with multiple errors

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 489

Reported by

– Jonesey95 (talk) 18:20, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience: Humans must occasionally make immediate edits to clean up after the bot

What happens

Bot created a template with |last= and |last1=, which it should not do. It also created a template with exactly four editors without adding |displayeditors=29, which it should do (see similar bug report above with more details). The bot also did not format the editors' names in the same way that it formats author names. The bot also left HTML markup in |title=. It also failed to pick up all of the authors' last names.

What should happen

Bot should not create redundant parameters. Bot should not create new templates that result in displayauthors or displayeditors errors. It should also display names consistently and remove HTML markup from parameter values.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Cite_doi/10.1117.2F12.832317&oldid=590389296

Replication instructions

Blank this template and ask Citation bot to recreate it.

Requested action from maintainer

Done.

Status

Verified

Reported by

– Jonesey95 (talk) 18:20, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

The bot did not format the editors' names in the same way that it formats author names.

What should happen

Display names consistently.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Cite_doi/10.1117.2F12.832317&oldid=590389296

Replication instructions

Blank this template and ask Citation bot to recreate it.

We can't proceed until

Maintainer: A specific edit to the bot's code is requested below.

bot added "last=" when "last1=" existed causing cite error

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 489

Reported by

R. S. Shaw (talk) 09:10, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

See [33] cite err msg; also surname of lead author overwritten by that of third author

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Chromosome&diff=590303087&oldid=589510969

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

Will be fixed when next version available. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 17:39, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Can't run the bot in the edit mode

It's been a while that I couldn't run the bot in the "edit" mode, i.e., after clicking "edit" on an article and a radio button "citations" at the bottom. This mode is most important for the bot, as it allows to preview changes before they are automatically saved (with potential errors, as done when clicking "expand citations"). Please restore this mode, or tell me if I miss something obvious. The error messages when trying to use this mode look like

Warning: session_start() [<a href='function.session-start'>function.session-start</a>]: Cannot send session cache limiter - headers already sent (output started at /data/project/citations/public_html/text.php:9) in /data/project/citations/public_html/expandFns.php on line 3
Materialscientist (talk) 00:44, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Looks like a victim of the move to the new servers. I'll investigate ASAP. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 17:23, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Just came here to report that I am experiencing the same problem, and to express my appreciation for the work you do with citation bot :) AioftheStorm (talk) 21:15, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

It works now, but attempts to add the above error message to the top of the edited article. Materialscientist (talk) 13:30, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Can't run the bot from the toolbox on the left side

I get this error message when running the bot from the toolbar on the left-hand-side:

Internal error

The URI you have requested, http://tools.wmflabs.org/citations/doibot.php?edit=toolbar&slow=1&user=Josve05a&page=Quassinoid, appears to be non-functional at this time.

Perhaps the webserver has temporarily lost its mind, or the link you've followed doesn't actually lead somewhere useful?

If you're pretty sure this shouldn't be an error, you may wish to notify the project administrators about the error and how you ended up here.

(t) Josve05a (c) 17:05, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

I tried it again, and then it worked. -(t) Josve05a (c) 17:06, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Bot altered the name of a reference, causing another ref to fail

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 505

Reported by

Redrose64 (talk) 21:09, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

Bot altered the name of a reference from <ref name="ReferenceA"> to <ref name="RailMagazine2007">, which caused an error which was not previously present.

Relevant diffs/links

The edit

We can't proceed until

Bot operator's feedback on what is feasible

The new version of the bot won't edit reference names. (It's too complicated.) Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:33, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Error Message!

Status

 Fixed in GitHub Pull 505

Reported by

Iamozy (talk) 20:00, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

The citation is expanded correctly, however the following text appears, twice, at the top of the page:

Warning: session_start() [<a href='function.session-start'>function.session-start</a>]: Cannot send session cookie - headers already sent by (output started at /data/project/citations/public_html/text.php:9) in /data/project/citations/public_html/expandFns.php on line 3

What should happen

Ideally, the error message shouldn't appear.

Relevant diffs/links

http://imgur.com/9soIUFd

Replication instructions

I simply typed in: ref name="Ma1999" cite journal pmid=10508203 /ref, with the appropriate brackets and clicked the citation button at the bottom of the editing pane.

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

Requested action from maintainer

Look at Line 3 for problems?

Random warning message appears, twice at top of page being edited every time I use the Citation bot. --Iamozy (talk) 20:00, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Will be resolved when the new version rolls out later this year. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:32, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Can't run the bot on Steve Jobs

Status

new bug

Reported by

(t) Josve05a (c) 10:09, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience

What happens

It does not load the page

Relevant diffs/links

http://pastebin.com/p18DyVpM

We can't proceed until

Agreement on the best solution

I can't run the bot on Steve Jobs. Is it due to the fact that the article is semi-protected? (t) Josve05a (c) 10:09, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Bot recreated deleted templates that have no apparent incoming links

Status

Triaging

Reported by

– Jonesey95 (talk) 23:06, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Type of bug

Inconvenience: Humans must occasionally make immediate edits to clean up after the bot

What happens

The bot created a handful of templates that have no apparent incoming links. I CSD'd them, and the bot recreated them. The bot should not autonomously recreate deleted templates, especially if they have no incoming links.

Replication instructions

Investigating: see which pages are triggering template creation...

We can't proceed until

Input from editors

Citation bot 2 created the following templates. I can't figure out why they were created in the first place, and I can't figure out why they were recreated after I CSD'd them. Time stamps are UTC-8.

• 14:34, 2014 January 28 (diff | hist) . . (+145)‎ . . N Template:Cite doi/10.2307.2F10.1086.2F663750 ‎ ([cw512]New page from {{Cite doi}} template) (current)
• 14:34, 2014 January 28 (diff | hist) . . (+103)‎ . . N Template:Cite pmid/25104635 ‎ ([cw512]New page from {{Cite pmid}} template) (current)
• 14:34, 2014 January 28 (diff | hist) . . (+103)‎ . . N Template:Cite pmid/25104016 ‎ ([cw512]New page from {{Cite pmid}} template) (current)
• 14:34, 2014 January 28 (diff | hist) . . (+103)‎ . . N Template:Cite pmid/40794784 ‎ ([cw512]New page from {{Cite pmid}} template) (current)
• 14:34, 2014 January 28 (diff | hist) . . (+103)‎ . . N Template:Cite pmid/25108119 ‎ ([cw512]New page from {{Cite pmid}} template) (current)
• 14:34, 2014 January 28 (diff | hist) . . (+103)‎ . . N Template:Cite pmid/25100523 ‎ ([cw512]New page from {{Cite pmid}} template) (current)
• 14:34, 2014 January 28 (diff | hist) . . (+103)‎ . . N Template:Cite pmid/25108201 ‎ ([cw512]New page from {{Cite pmid}} template) (current)
• 14:34, 2014 January 28 (diff | hist) . . (+103)‎ . . N Template:Cite pmid/25107223 ‎ ([cw512]New page from {{Cite pmid}} template) (current)
• 14:34, 2014 January 28 (diff | hist) . . (+103)‎ . . N Template:Cite pmid/40936072 ‎ ([cw512]New page from {{Cite pmid}} template) (current)
• 14:34, 2014 January 28 (diff | hist) . . (+103)‎ . . N Template:Cite pmid/25207853 ‎ ([cw512]New page from {{Cite pmid}} template) (current)
• 14:34, 2014 January 28 (diff | hist) . . (+109)‎ . . N Template:Cite pmid/10.1086/663750 ‎ ([cw512]New page from {{Cite pmid}} template) (current)
• 14:34, 2014 January 28 (diff | hist) . . (+103)‎ . . N Template:Cite pmid/27532624 ‎ ([cw512]New page from {{Cite pmid}} template) (current)
• 14:34, 2014 January 28 (diff | hist) . . (+103)‎ . . N Template:Cite pmid/25107749 ‎ ([cw512]New page from {{Cite pmid}} template) (current)
• 14:34, 2014 January 28 (diff | hist) . . (+103)‎ . . N Template:Cite pmid/25107510 ‎ ([cw512]New page from {{Cite pmid}} template) (current)
• 14:34, 2014 January 28 (diff | hist) . . (+103)‎ . . N Template:Cite pmid/30064609 ‎ ([cw512]New page from {{Cite pmid}} template) (current)
• 14:34, 2014 January 28 (diff | hist) . . (+103)‎ . . N Template:Cite pmid/25130323 ‎ ([cw512]New page from {{Cite pmid}} template) (current)

Can you explain what happened here and how it might be prevented? – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:06, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

When the bot creates these templates, it now mentions the page that includes them in the edit summary. This should help to understand (and if necessary debug) why the templates are being created. Do let me know if the problem persists. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 08:07, 31 January 2014 (UTC)