User talk:Citation bot/Archive 31

Archive 25

←

Archive 29

Archive 30

Archive 31

Archive 32

Archive 33

→

Archive 35

Bot sputtering

The bot seems to be stalling; pauses for significant lengths of time, also was giving the 503 error. Abductive (reasoning) 20:24, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

DOIs that point to larger document

Status

not a bug

Reported by

Ariconte (talk) 03:01, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

What happens

New link added - https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Frederick_C._Leonard&type=revision&diff=1079490992&oldid=1028937799

What should happen

nothing

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

I will revert the added link --- link is to a pub which adds no value.

The problem appears to be that the doi already there (doi:10.1111/j.1945-5100.2002.tb00912.x) goes to a 150-page "abstracts" section on which the publication actually cited is somewhere in the middle (page A34). The newly added link is to a different publication under the same doi (one of the two on the first page, page A9). —David Eppstein (talk) 07:43, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Fixed up the refs on that page to fix issues. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:26, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Olearia cuneifolia

Status

 Fixed by adding to NO_DATE_WEBSITES list

Reported by

Gderrin (talk) 04:07, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

The bot is adding a random date to a reference in Olearia cuneifolia. The Queensland Government Department of Environment and Science regularly updates the linked page, the last time on 8 March 2022. Adding the date "20 October 2014" suggests to a reader of the article that the linked website is out of date. Gderrin (talk) 04:07, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

undefined issue

Status

{{fixed}}

Reported by

Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 13:24, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

What happens

Added |issue=undefined

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Aging-associated_diseases&diff=prev&oldid=1080635948

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

I know this is garbage, but should be added to a bad-list. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 13:24, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Billboard dates

Status

{{fixed}} by adding billboard to ignore dates list

Reported by

Exallonyx (talk) 15:43, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

What happens

The bot seems to be putting incorrect dates on Billboard year-end chart citations. I noticed it from this edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=I_Hate_U,_I_Love_U&diff=prev&oldid=1080644452 , where it put |date=2 January 2013 on 2 citations of 2016 year-end charts, which is obviously incorrect. I assume it's coming from the <meta property="article:published_time" content="2013-01-02T14:48:25+00:00" /> in the Billboard page's source code, so maybe the bot should ignore those tags on Billboard.com URLs?
It seems to have done this many times - I searched insource:/\{\{cite[^\}]+?billboard\.com\/charts\/year-end\/2016[^\}]+? 2013/ and that brought up 68 results of what, from clicking on the first few, appear to be the same deal, and that's just for 2016 links.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Link publisher?

It would be nice if the citation bot could wikilink |publisher= attributes that it adds when the wiki article exists, e.g., |publisher=IBM, |publisher=IEEE. --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:19, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

@Chatul: I have created a pull request for this: https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3888

The bot's maintainers will decide whether to implement it. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:59, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

It has been implemented: https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/3888 BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:59, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Publisher type error

See [1]. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 01:49, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

 Fixed AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:30, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

book reviews

Status

 Won't fix without examples. I tried a bunch and could not reproduce

Reported by

Prairieplant (talk) 03:39, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

This bot is turning online reviews of books into books, that is, cite web into cite book, making up an isbn and deleting the url sometimes. It has happened in Reviews section of two different novels by Ellis Peters in Cadfael series. The bot should leave Publishers Weekly, Library Journal citations alone. -- Prairieplant (talk) 03:39, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Example edits please. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:31, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

ISBN in Cite web

Status

new bug

Reported by

Johannes Schade (talk) 06:30, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

The bot changed "{{Cite web|last=Coolahan |first=Marie-Louise |date=9 May 2019 |title=Dowdall [née Southwell], Elizabeth |website=[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]] |doi=10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.112775 |url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-112775 |access-date=14 March 2021 |url-access=subscription}} – Online edition" -> "{{Cite web|last=Coolahan |first=Marie-Louise |date=9 May 2019 |title=Dowdall [née Southwell], Elizabeth |website=[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]] |doi=10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.112775 |isbn=978-0-19-861412-8 |url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-112775 |access-date=14 March 2021 |url-access=subscription}} – Online edition". I doubt the bot checks the book against the website. The website could differ from what was published in the book with that ISBN. I do not think an ISBN should be added under these circumstances. With thanks and best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 06:30, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

A diff would be more useful than the above. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:26, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

To cite the ODNB, use {{cite ODNB}}:

{{Cite ODNB |last=Coolahan |first=Marie-Louise |date=9 May 2019 |title=Dowdall [née Southwell], Elizabeth |doi=10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.112775}}

Coolahan, Marie-Louise (9 May 2019). "Dowdall [née Southwell], Elizabeth". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.112775. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:12, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Normally this would work, but in this case, DOI is broken and needs to use the URL parameter instead. I fixed all 3 articles using this citation to use Cite ODNB with the URL.  — Chris Capoccia 💬 14:10, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Stalled job

A batch job of mine has been stalled for about 14 hours. I have tried to kill it using https://citations.toolforge.org/kill_big_job.php, but it won't die.

Please can it be killed? BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:13, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

This zombie job is still blocking me from starting a new batch. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:02, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Is it working now? AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:21, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

@AManWithNoPlan: it is still not working.

I tried a few seconds ago, and got the same big bolded response: "Run blocked by your existing big run". BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:42, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Wrong S2CID

Status

 Not a bug - doi was wrong

Reported by

Nardog (talk) 18:10, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

What happens

Wrong S2CID added (241198800, for "New England: phonology", instead of 242118647, for "New Zealand English: phonology").

Relevant diffs/links

Special:Diff/1075641803

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Just simple GIGO. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:29, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

spelling change

Status

 Not a bug

Reported by

-- ☽☆ NotCharizard (talk) 17:01, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

What happens

just changed spelling in main entry to be incorrect (connectivity -> connecvity)

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=K-vertex-connected_graph&curid=7566175&diff=1081957629&oldid=987331267&diffmode=source

You are mistaken. The bot's edit did not change 'connectivity' to 'connecvity'. That was done at the diff you provided by an ip editor. Not a bug.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:14, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

yeah, I know, probably gigo...

Status

 Fixed, added to do not spelling correct list

Reported by

Trappist the monk (talk) 00:06, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

What happens

converts French parameter |lien= to unrelated English parameter |lccn=

Relevant diffs/links

diff

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

It begins with Editor Sulpyensid using French citation templates in the English Wikipedia at the article's creation. These templates are: fr:Modèle:Lire en ligne and fr:Modèle:Lien web. Editor Sulpyensid should have translated those French templates to their more-or-less matching English templates.

At this edit, AnomieBOT fixed the Lien web templates by substing them to {{cite web}}.

At this edit, SporkBot renamed Lire_en_ligne without completing the job by renaming the parameters within those templates. SporkBot should not be renaming non-English templates without it also renames the parameters within those templates; cs1|2 coughs up red empty citation error messages because the only parameter in these templates is |lien=.

Because of SporkBot's failure, at this edit, Citation bot changed the French |lien= (a url-holding parameter) in the English {{cite web}} template to |lccn= (an identifier-holding parameter) afterwhich cs1|2 coughs up four separate red error messages per template.

Yeah, this is a cascade of events that should not have happened had the various participants done the right things at the right time...

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:06, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Can be run locally?

The hosted version of this bot is frequently overloaded. Can this be run on my local machine? Is there a document that describes how that can be done? I'm especially having trouble understanding how to do oath in env.php.example. --Mblumber (talk) 22:10, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

I have updated the code and in-code documentation. You will need your own Wikipedia Oauth tokens that are described in the example ini file. Please change BOT_USER_AGENT variable. Finally, only the process_page.php file supports command line running. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:07, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Should work now and is documented.  Fixed. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:59, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

ISFDB connected to incorrect URL

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:39, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

What happens

A citation to ISFDB, whose website is isfdb.org, instead gets sfdb.org as the website.

Relevant diffs/links

Diff of the error: https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Imagination_(magazine)&diff=prev&oldid=1082465500&diffmode=source

I have figured it out and fixed it. Also, I am going back and fixed the pages damaged. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:27, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Great; thanks. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:08, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Default titles for dead links without flagging

Status

{{fixed}}

Reported by

Mikeblas (talk) 19:00, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

What happens

Citation bot doesn't recognize decorated dead links and places title=404 in a {{cite web}} tag. The bot made two such changes here, which went undetected for several weeks. since the robot's actions aren't monitored or audited.

What should happen

dead raw links shouldn't be converted to {{cite web}} tags and, instead, either left alone or marked with {{dead link}}. The bot's changes should be reviewed to make sure they're constructive.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Waxahachie,_Texas&diff=prev&oldid=1067168696&diffmode=source

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Garbage title: ShieldSquare Captcha

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:19, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

What should happen

See the first diff line [2]

When using a "new section" and then using a gadget, the section header title is not displayed correctly

See Draft talk:Suita conjecture (diff).--SilverMatsu (talk) 01:20, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

That's an issue with WP:EDITSUMMARYs when creating new sections, where you cannot have an edit summary separate from the section title. At that time, the user is responsible for their own edits.

It might be worth investigating if edit summaries should be disabled in that situation, but really, review the changes before saving them. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:08, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

@Headbomb: Thank you for teaching me !--SilverMatsu (talk) 03:53, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

and the academy award for the most unexpected bug goes to......10:53, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Adding note to gadget talk area. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:58, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Some cite magazine conversions

Status

{{fixed}}

Reported by

Lightlowemon (talk) 01:32, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

What happens

Playthings should be corrected to magazine (this looks like a junk in junk out situation)

What should happen

Cite journal should be converted to cite magazine

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Legacy_of_Kain&diff=prev&oldid=1083100047

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Not entirely certain I'm correct on this one, but given it has magazine in the brackets on the page and is in WikiProject magazines, I feel like I am. --Lightlowemon (talk) 01:32, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Similar here with Nintendo Power. --Lightlowemon (talk) 02:14, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Some more missed conversions Electronic Gaming Monthly, Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, PlayStation: The Official Magazine, Play and Silicon Mag. Also Games Radar, Hyper, Famitsu and GamePro--Lightlowemon (talk) 05:13, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Just checked Official Xbox Magazine as well and a whole host of them in this article... I wasn't expecting there to be so many incorrect cite journals. I thought it was just Game Informer and Edge when I started looking at these. Sorry. --Lightlowemon (talk) 05:22, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

There was a not insignificant period where cite mag redirected to cite journal and where AWB was run with one of its general fixes being to change one to the other. This is probably why you are seeing so many. Izno (talk) 06:07, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

That seems like a weird choice, but it explains why there are so many, I've got one more that also seemed to stick around which is Entertainment Weekly. --Lightlowemon (talk) 00:21, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

DOI Removal

Status

{{fixed}}, very rare and obscure

Reported by

Lightlowemon (talk) 00:21, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

What happens

doi was removed, but the parameter was left behind

What should happen

Either doi stays if valid, or parameter removed with entry if not

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Submerged_floating_tunnel&diff=prev&oldid=1083231508

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Wrong publication dates from Apple Music

Why bot adds publication dates of pages with album from Apple Music if this is not date of when page with album was published in Apple Music but something different - date of release date of this album so site with album might show up month before album release etc. Apple Music doesn't add date when page with album was added to store so it shouldn't be added. Eurohunter (talk) 09:49, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Incorrect changed should be canccelled. Eurohunter (talk) 19:26, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

And how do you suggest finding them? AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:44, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Caps: Journal of the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:11, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

What should happen

[3]

Caps: BioMedical Engineering OnLine

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:53, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

What should happen

[4]

Why is the bot processing batches of drafts?

In September 2021, the bot was reconfigured to exclude drafts from batch jobs, but still allow them as individual requests. See User talk:Citation bot/Archive_27#Please_exclude_draft_space_from_batch_jobs

This was because a) most drafts are never promoted to mainspace, so it's silly to waste bot time on them when there are plenty of actual mainspace articles needing the bot's attention; b) cleaning up refs doesn't help the assessments of drafts.

But now the bot is chomping its way through the whole of Category:AfC pending submissions by age/0 days ago, at the request of RoanokeVirginia.

How is this possible? BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:42, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Not sure. Will look at when I have time. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 00:02, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

@AManWithNoPlan: did you get a chance to look at this?

More batches of drafts are being processed today, again including the whole of Category:AfC pending submissions by age/0 days ago. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:37, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

 Fixed AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:11, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

Wrong publication dates from Apple Music

What about to remove wrong edits by bot? He added publication dates of pages with album from Apple Music if this is not date of when page with album was published in Apple Music but something different - date of release date of this album so site with album might show up month before album release etc. Apple Music doesn't add date when page with album was added to store so it shouldn't be added. Eurohunter (talk) 14:24, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Nothing will (or can) be done to remove those dates. Many tools/bots that add dates to wikipedia use those dates. Even if removed, other tools will add them back. The majority of these dates were added by human accounts and not the bot. Tracking them down and removing them is something the bot is not authorized to do. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:21, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

@AManWithNoPlan: Just check if there is "https://music.apple.com/" and remove date. If it can find this adress and add date then it can find this address and remove this date. Eurohunter (talk) 16:01, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

there is no way the bot could go more than an hour without being banned. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:56, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

@AManWithNoPlan: ? Eurohunter (talk) 20:09, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

The bot will get banned within the first couple hours of doing this. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:24, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

{{wontfix}} but I suggest opening a discussion on the CS1/2 help pages to get agreement. Then someone can have a bot run that fixes all of them. The bot would need to only fix ones that exactly matched the apple dates, since anything else is clearly human added. Also, if the dates are genrally not off by much, then simply truncating to the year might be advantageous. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:42, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Change syntax of cite templates for future bot edits

Status

mostly {{fixed}}

Reported by

Jason Quinn (talk) 00:44, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

What happens

In template parameters, no space before pipes, spaces around equal signs

AND order of parameters should be considered

What should happen

Space before pipes, no spaces around equals. This dramatically improves readability in a text editor, and is critically important when the editor is using text wrapping as in the case in web browser form editors. We want the editor to group the related text, not unrelated text. Also, the bot should put a lot more thought into the order of the cite template parameters inserted. In both CS1 and CS2 there's a roughly similar order for the display appearance of the reference. It is very helpful when the cite template roughly matches this. It is also helpful when the unreadable things like |url= come near the end instead of at the beginning. Also details like using |last= instead of |last1= when there's only one author are nice. So instead of

{{Cite web|url = https://www.example.com|title = Star Trek Picard is Bad|publisher = Non-shrill reviewer|last1 = Quinn|first1 = Jason|date = 23 April 2022}}

it is dramatically better as something like

{{cite web |last=Quinn |first=Jason |date=23 April 2022 |title=Star Trek Picard is Bad |publisher=Non-shrill reviewer |url=https://www.example.com}}

In isolation this may not be instantly obvious, but when an article has many references and you are using a wrapping text editor, the benefits of the later formatting become striking for readability.

Relevant diffs/links

example of undesired spacing at Autocracy

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

For existing citations, this will run afoul of WP:COSMETICBOT and piss people off by the dozens. This should not be done by bot (again, for existing citations). Could be done for new citations though. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:25, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

the number of people who act like this type action is worse than <<insert heanous act>> is suprising. although, I think that is because people react to things they have control over (one death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic) AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:20, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

@Headbomb:. I don't think I explained myself properly. I am not proposing to fix existing citations. I am proposing that the bot be changed so that NEW citations follow the given format. Please reopen under that idea. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:11, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

No way. The bot will be banned. We follow the existing format within each template. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:28, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Umm, I'm perplexed. In the OP's diff, search for {cite and you will find three pre-existing cs1|2 templates that all have the spacing style described by Editor Jason Quinn. Looking at the whole article, there are 18 cs1|2 templates; all but one (the template created by the bot) have the spacing style described above. The bot may follow the existing format within each template when modifying a template, but clearly, the bot does not follow the existing format that predominates in the article. But, when creating a new template from a url as was the case here, it does not have to. Recently, the template data that controls the spacing used by that abomination that is visual editor, was changed to use the spacing style described by Editor Jason Quinn. As far as I know, there has been no pushback from that. New templates created with WP:RefToolbar also use that spacing:

{{cite web |last1=Quinn |first1=Jason |title=Star Trek Picard is Bad |url=http://www.example.com |website=Non-shrill reviewer |date=23 April 2022}}

Because both of the primary cs1|2 template creation tools create spaced templates, it seems to me that The bot will be banned for creating NEW citations [that] follow the given format is just not true.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:02, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

try out new code. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:38, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

@AManWithNoPlan and Headbomb:. As Trappist wrote, the Bot doesn't detect and follow the predominate style so I also don't follow that objection. Nor do I see how changing the bot to use the suggested formatting for its future edits runs afoul of WP:COSMETICBOT. But I do want bot editors and bot maintainers to be extremely meticulous in the quality of the bot's edits and to have carefully considered them. While there's no official syntax of cite template parameters, I do expect bot devs to care about it when coding the bot. I am suggesting, for instance, that not putting a space before the pipe hinders reading of the source in text editors, especially those that wrap text. The same goes for putting spaces around the equals sign. If there's a reasonable argument that is weightier than these objections I fail to guess what it is. In fact, as Trappist also mentions, cite template formatting has tended to evolve to the format I'm proposing. Why? Better it's simply better. A bot should want to take advantage of that. Jason Quinn (talk) 05:46, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

PS I have changed the section heading title from "Fix bad spacing choices" to "Change syntax of cite templates for future bot edits" because I think my title was too ambiguous and took the initial discussion in the wrong direction. I arrived here by clicking a "Report a bug" link for the bot. So I wrote the title as if it were a bug report suggesting a change to the current version of the software. Jason Quinn (talk) 05:52, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Please check new default for new refs. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:53, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

@AManWithNoPlan: What do you mean by this? I had checked the github but didn't see any commits or any discussion about a new default or any edits using a new default. Jason Quinn (talk) 08:42, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

I mean try it out on some examples. while looking over the code change can be insightful, the actual actions of the bot dont always match what a quick look at the code would imply. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:20, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

This was brought up here before, and there was general agreement that the "tidy" spaces-before-pipes-no-spaces-elsewhere format is superior to the "crammed" no-spaces-anywhere format and the "roomy" spaces-everywhere format. Anything else is awful and marks the users who do it as careless or perhaps unhinged. But I think it might be better to bring this up at a larger forum, such as Help talk:Citation Style 1 or the WP:Village Pump. Abductive (reasoning) 03:07, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Caps: Cutter IT Journal

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:36, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

What should happen

[5]

Converts an arxiv link to cite web instead of cite arxiv

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:36, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

[6]

What should happen

cite arxiv instead, i.e. [7]

Fails to expand cite arxiv with a v#

Status

 Fixed - added support for v# to the regex

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:38, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

What should happen

[8]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

I had to change <ref>{{arxiv|q-bio/0309009v1}}</ref> to <ref>{{arxiv|q-bio/0309009}}</ref> to make it expand. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:38, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Fails to expand when No title found

Status

 Fixed - will now expand if journal and (issue/volume) and year and pages are all found.

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:02, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

What should happen

Ideally, this . But if that can't be done, this.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

by design. the bot has safeguards to avoid making things worse. it is an odds game: it misses some expansions in exhange for not adding junk. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:26, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Surely those safeguards are overly aggressive here. How can things be worse than a bare doi:10.1023/A:1018861226606? It's one thing to not touch an existing CS1/2 template with a title that doesn't expand. But here there's literally nothing to make worse. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:35, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Cite news to cite journal conversion

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:14, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

What should happen

[9]

incomplete expansion

Status

 Won't fix

Reported by

Astro$01 (talk) 23:42, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

bot looks to website for authorship, e.g., "ABC News, and cites web

What should happen

should cite news for a news article and cite actual author & organization, e.g., "Felicia Fonseca", "Associated Press"

Relevant diffs/links

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/autopsy-teenage-girl-died-dog-attack-navajo-nation-78840441

A news story should cite the author and organization they work for, if present in the original web page.

Sorry, but the problem is with the zotero host that wikipedia provides, and it outside the control of the bot. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:17, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Better hdl handling / cleanup

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:55, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

[10]

What should happen

[11]

Cosmetic edit: Template capitalization

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:35, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

What should happen

Only if there are other non-cosmetic changes

Better issue/date declusterfuckering

Status

 Won't fix, since difficulty to benefit ratio is too high

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:49, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

What should happen

[12]

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

It is a thing, and not an easy one to solve via automation at first glance. Unrelated observation: the last word of the section title cannot be used in Scrabble, as I think you made it up. 50.74.109.2 (talk) 01:21, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Proper conversion of cite journal |doi=10.48550/arXiv.####.##### to proper cite arXiv |eprint=####.#####

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:11, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

What happens

[13]

What should happen

[14]

That is, when you have |journal=arxiv ..., TNT the template as {{cite arxiv |eprint=...}} and expand. What the eprint is can be determined from the DOI or the url. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:11, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Added {Cite xxx}s clash with common-use {cite xxx |param1=value1 |param2=value2}

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

A876 (talk) 01:29, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

When it fixes bare references, it puts {{Cite web | url=httzzzzz | title=zzz }}.

What should happen

It should put {{cite web |url=httzzzzz |title=zzz}}.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Panos_Panay&diff=prev&oldid=1087050803

It is discouraging to see a bot rolling backwards like this. My objectionable gaffes get multiplied by only 1000 views. Objectionable gaffes by bots get multiplied by 1000 edits * 1000 views. (I am jealous. 😀)

• {{Cite web}} most everywhere else is spelled {{cite web.
• Parameters for inline citation templates (and most templates) are documented as |param1=value1. (One space before |, none after. No spaces around =.)
• Space before closing }} is pointless.

(When changing existing {{cite web}}, it appears to leave existing case and spacing as-is, except for spaces before and after parameter(s) that it creates.[15]) -A876 (talk) 01:29, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

|chapter= is not a valid parameter for cite web

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Trappist the monk (talk) 13:42, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

bot changed |title= in {{cite web}} to |chapter= and changed |url= to |chapter-url=

What should happen

in this case, the best possible action would have been to change {{cite web}} to {{cite grove}} as I did here; barring that, bot should not use |chapter= (or aliases thereof) in {{cite web}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite magazine}}, {{cite news}}, {{cite periodical}}; this same restriction applies to adjunct parameters |chapter-url=, |script-chapter=, etc

Relevant diffs/links

diff

Often it is better to leave these for people to fix. They are rare, but I will look into specific cases that can be bot fixed. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:32, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

Bad series= on conference

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 06:45, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

The Association for Computing Machinery produces bad metadata for conference proceedings like the "Proceedings of the Tenth Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA '99)" with the acronym for the conference (including its year, capitalized incorrectly as "Soda '99") in the series parameter. That is not the name of a series. Citation bot has been importing this garbage wholesale into Wikipedia.

What should happen

Do not respect series= data from ACM. It is bad.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Anna_Lubiw&type=revision&diff=1087222456&oldid=957764836

In the same citation, the url= should have been contribution-url=. It would be nice if citation bot could have caught and fixed that error instead of adding the wrong series. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:56, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/commit/32a6e4904b4e16604ebe502f4ad2bd8e53de519f AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:05, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

External Relations as author

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 07:47, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

Adds last=Relations first=External

What should happen

not that

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Katherine_Heinrich&type=revision&diff=1087242291&oldid=1085074266

PS re this and the previous bug: For some reason a recent run is triggering a huge number of citation bot edits in my watchlist. So far only those two have been problematic, and the problems are relatively minor. All the rest of the edits look good to me. So, my thanks for making the bot so reliable and useful. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:48, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/commit/637bbe891398f37754e30e269072058794a03d86 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:01, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

title=404 Not Found

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:58, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

bare URL filled with |title=404 Not Found

What should happen

Nothing. That is an error message, not a title, so the bot should either skip that ref or tag it with {{Dead link}}.

(However, Citation bot could usefully catch a large trout, and go give the zotero server a sustained trout-slapping for feeding such junk to the bot. The zotero should itself reject such a title from a website)

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Thornton_v_Shoe_Lane_Parking_Ltd&diff=1087423252&oldid=1082982942

just when you think you have all the bad 404 forms covered. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:20, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

Sadly, webmasters are an ingenious bunch who show huge creativity in devising new ways to break the really simple HTTP 404 response, and thereby make avoidable extra work for you

I just did a wiksearch for "insource:/\| *title *= *404 Not Found/i", which gave 135 hits. So this is evidently not a new issue, although obviously they may not all have been caused by Citation bot.

Some of them have since been archives, and those ones may be rescuable. A simple revert of all of them would therefore not be appropriate, so I will begin a selective cleanup. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:30, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

Fails to properly TNT cite journal with journal = arxiv... / handle

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:25, 12 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

[16]

What should happen

TNT + expand

Cite conference is book-title&title, not title&chapter

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Gumshoe2 (talk) 19:49, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

[17]

The metadata added in this edit reproduces information already present, but makes it so that the most relevant information (article title rather than book title) does not render, with the book title repeated twice. For example, it modified

Floater, Michael S.; Hormann, Kai (2005). "Surface parameterization: a tutorial and survey". In Dodgson, Neil A.; Floater, Michael S.; Sabin, Malcolm A. (eds.). Advances in multiresolution for geometric modelling. Papers from the workshop (MINGLE 2003) held in Cambridge, September 9–11, 2003. Mathematics and Visualization. Berlin: Springer. pp. 157–186.

to

Floater, Michael S.; Hormann, Kai (2005). "Advances in Multiresolution for Geometric Modelling". In Dodgson, Neil A.; Floater, Michael S.; Sabin, Malcolm A. (eds.). Advances in multiresolution for geometric modelling. Papers from the workshop (MINGLE 2003) held in Cambridge, September 9–11, 2003. Mathematics and Visualization. Berlin: Springer. pp. 157–186.

Gumshoe2 (talk) 19:49, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

The existence of |chapter= in {{cite conference}} should be an error that CS1/2 tracks. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:09, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Trivial and undesirable changes to |work=

Status

 Not a bug - as discussed

Reported by

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:33, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

What happens

Making trivial changes, with no other edits, in contravention of WP:COSMETICBOT policy.

What should happen

Should not make trivial changes except as part of a more substantive edit. Also, it should not be making this specific change at all, since it is not an improvement: There is no reason to use a long parameter alias when a short one will do, and using this particular short one, |work=, facilitates conversion between citation templates, e.g. when {{Cite web}} or {{Cite news}} would be more appropriate for the source in question.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Van_cat&type=revision&diff=1083853848&oldid=1083423045&diffmode=source

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

While a bug for it to be done alone, reverting that edit is nonsense. |journal= is clear, |work= isn't. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:40, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Definitely an unorthodox use of work in the cite journal template. have never seen that system. template clearly shows using journal parameter. seems like the bot made a good fix to me.  — Chris Capoccia 💬 14:13, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

And SMcCandlish's revert was a breach of WP:COSMETICREVERT. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:48, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Editors also convert from cs1 to cs2 so converting {{cite journal}} to {{citation}} when the journal title is held in |work= causes a loss of 'journal-style' |volume= and |issue= formatting:

{{cite journal |title=Title |work=Journal |volume=123 |issue=6}} – assuming that the source really is a scholarly or academic journal

"Title". Journal. 123 (6).

{{citation |title=Title |work=Journal |volume=123 |issue=6}} – now renders like a magazine or generic periodical

"Title", Journal, vol. 123, no. 6

No doubt, going the other way can cause similar mis-rendering. So, in general, the 'work' parameter should follow the template name: |journal= for {{cite journal}}, |magazine= for {{cite magazine}}, |periodical= for {{cite periodical}}, |website= for {{cite web}}, certainly |newspaper= for {{cite news}} but (until we invent something that is more semantically correct) |website= or |work= also for {{cite news}}.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:45, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

title=404页面

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:58, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

| title=404页面

What should happen

nothing. The link is dead

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Vantour_Mangoungou&diff=prev&oldid=1087519539

Caps: AORN J/AORN J.

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:28, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

[18]

What should happen

[19]

Untitled_new_bug

Status

 Not a bug

Reported by

Epiphyllumlover (talk) 21:56, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

The bot keeps bolding the word "Roe" in references

What should happen

It should leave the existing < i >< / i > formatting in place so it doesn't bold things in references

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Roe_v._Wade&diff=1087952340&oldid=1087913623

Huh? The diff shows only the bot changing a curly quote to a straight one per MOS:CURLY. There is no bold visible there or nearby. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:13, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Whatever this complaint is, it's got nothing to do with Citation bot. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:18, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

This edit changed <i>Roe</i>'s to ''Roe'''s but that edit was not made by this bot. Fixed by changing to ''Roe''{{'s}}

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:31, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

title=Sign up | LinkedIn

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:59, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

bot fills a bare URL ref to a http://www.linkedin.com profile with the generic title | title=Sign up | LinkedIn

What should happen

Nothing. Better to leave the link bare

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Ron_Arnold&diff=prev&oldid=1087969140

Replication instructions

try any of the 697 pages returned in a search for insource:/\>https?:\/\/(www\.)?linkedin\.com[^ \<\>\{\}]+ *(\{\{bare *url *inline[^\}]*\}\} *)?\<\/ref/i

El País is a newspaper, not a person

Status

{{fixed}} once deployed, which might take a while

Reported by

BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:38, 16 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

BEFORE: {{Cite web|url=https://elpais.com/diario/1980/10/18/cultura/340671609_850215.html|website=[[El País]]|date=18 October 1980|title=El destino de una vida}}
AFTER: {{Cite news|url=https://elpais.com/diario/1980/10/18/cultura/340671609_850215.html|website=[[El País]]|date=18 October 1980|title=El destino de una vida|last1=País |first1=El }}

What should happen

nothing

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=D%C3%A1maso_Berenguer&diff=1088228152&oldid=1087820834

Replication instructions

This seems to be a quirk of how El País handles archive pages.
This article https://elpais.com/diario/1980/10/18/cultura/340671609_850215.html places the newspaper's name in the position where I would expect to find the name of the author, which is where the place where it is in article from today: https://elpais.com/internacional/2022-05-16/putin-afirma-que-la-entrada-de-finlandia-y-suecia-en-la-otan-no-supone-una-amenaza-inmediata-para-rusia.html

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

CAPS: For.

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:30, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

[20]

What should happen

[21] (or rather it shouldn't have touched 'For.' to begin with).

Double edit

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:23, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

[22]+[23]

Seems to be due to first adding |doi-access=free, then realizing you don't need the URL anymore. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:42, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Lower case to capital

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Roelof Hendrickx (talk) 10:07, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

Changing journal=Spiegel der Historie. Maandblad voor de geschiedenis der Nederlanden by journal=Spiegel der Historie. Maandblad voor de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden.

What should happen

The lower case g in geschiedenis should not be changed into capital G

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=John_VII,_Count_of_Nassau-Siegen&type=revision&diff=1088467180&oldid=1087773875&diffmode=source

Apostrophe

Status

{{not a bug}}

Reported by

Roelof Hendrickx (talk) 10:17, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

Changing title=l’Allemagne Dynastique into title=l'Allemagne Dynastique

What should happen

It shouldn't be changed. An apostrophe is written as ’ not as '

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=John_VII,_Count_of_Nassau-Siegen&type=revision&diff=1088467180&oldid=1087773875&diffmode=source

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

On Wikipedia, they're ' not ’, see MOS:APOSTROPHE. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:38, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Then Wikipedia is telling me that 1x1=3. Graphic designers designed the apostroph as ’ instead of '. And they had a very good reason for it. The former is far more readable than the latter. As a professional editor it is a violation of my professional code to use the reverse tear on modern keyboards. I dislike it when a bot is changing texts that are better. Roelof Hendrickx (talk) 12:15, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

If you have a problem with MOS:APOSTROPHE, take it to WT:MOS.

And as a 'professional editor', you should be well-aware of external requirements that go against your personal preferences. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:26, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

As a professional editor for almost 34 years I have never been asked to go for consistency making it worse/less readable than it was. Besides that am I not talking about personal preferences but about normal use of apostrophes in texts. Roelof Hendrickx (talk) 14:56, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Accessibility and consistency are both pillars of wikipedia, and probably legal requirements in many areas. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:36, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Changing correct url

Status

{{not a bug}}

Reported by

Roelof Hendrickx (talk) 10:19, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

Changing url=https://books.google.fr/books?id=uUITAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA683&dq=mariage+watteville+boba into url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uUITAAAAQAAJ&dq=mariage+watteville+boba&pg=PA683

What should happen

Nothing, the original link was and is correct and working

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=John_VII,_Count_of_Nassau-Siegen&type=revision&diff=1088467180&oldid=1087773875&diffmode=source

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

The second link is simpler and doesn't contain useless parameters. Not a bug. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:38, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

The first link is correct so a bot shouldn't change it. So yes, it is a bug imho. Roelof Hendrickx (talk) 12:10, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

It's also de-localized (.fr to .com). Not a bug. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:25, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Why is it so difficult to understand the principle do not change what is not incorrect? Roelof Hendrickx (talk) 14:53, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

They are incorrect according to the wikipedia style guides for google books links.AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:11, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

"Not incorrect" doesn't mean "can't/must not be improved." I can write 'In MMXXII James bought XVI pears and CDLII apples' and that would be not incorrect. That doesn't mean it's what I should write. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:30, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Bot thinks El País is the name of an author

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 03:22, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

The bot mistakenly assumes that "El País" is the name of the article's author, rather than that of the website that published it, and inserts author-name fields to this end.

What should happen

Not that.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=D%C3%A1maso_Berenguer&diff=1088567386&oldid=1088228595

@Whoop whoop pull up: I can't fix the bot, but I'll work on fixing the existing articles with incorrect references. GoingBatty (talk) 03:52, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

The bot was rebooted. I suspect all running jobs died

AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:37, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Incorrect change of template type

Status

 Fixed

Reported by

Invasive Spices (talk) 19 May 2022 (UTC)

What happens

Incorrect change {{cite proceedings}}⇨{{cite journal}}

Relevant diffs/links

This diff.

Slack in bot usage

It seems like demand for the bot has declined quite a bit, and there have been periods with no jobs running. There are often long stretches with only one job running. Perhaps the job size limit could be increased a bit, and see how it goes? Abductive (reasoning) 15:23, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

define("MAX_PAGES", 2850); now set. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:22, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Part of the slack might be some significant speed-ups made to the code implemented recently. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:23, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Isn't 2850 the current limit? Abductive (reasoning) 03:52, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

added a thousand. Now. 3850. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:43, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! Abductive (reasoning) 19:01, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Curious - why 3850, instead of a rounder number like 4000 or 4096? (Also, when'd the limit get raised from 2200 to 2850?) Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 19:56, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

So I tried a single-shot using the ☑ Citations button. It failed as usual. Quelle surprise. Not. If priority is to be given to these bottom-dragging trawls, please just stop wasting everybody else's time and withdraw the button. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:13, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Oftentimes the page gets processed eventually even if you see a 502 error. Also, your OAuth login to Meta expires in something like 24 hours, so if it has been more than a day since you tried to run the bot, a delay in Meta bringing up the login will look like a delay in the bot. These Meta delays are quite common. Abductive (reasoning) 00:01, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

That's activating through the 'expand citations' options. The ☑ Citations button times out. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:15, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Exactly. Like most users, I am not using a bot. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:34, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Put me down for a return to a ~1k page limit. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:17, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

And me. 2850 was anti-social. 3850 looks like enemy action. Why are the very few (<5?) bot operators allowed to make this tool unusable for everyone else. Like I suspect most other 'single shot' users, I had given up on using the button because failure was the usual option. When any efficiency gain is immediately thrown to the wolves, that will persist. If the bot limit is to be increased rather than heavily reduced, let's stop pretending that there is a credible single shot option. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:34, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree with JMF.

If bot tasks are indeed making human submissions impossible, then some sort of queuing system needs to be fixed or placed to make sure the bot tasks go as planned while prioritizing human submissions to the bot. This should be of utmost importance as any other bug fixes are worthless if people can't even use the thing.

Even archive.today and ghostarchive.org, with a budget probably 1000x smaller than the WMF, have priority queues, so the human submitters get priority over what i presume are automated sumbitters. So it can be done, the question now is will the WMF put in the resources to do it? Rlink2 (talk) 13:00, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

It's not really why the citation button chokes. That can be due to a ton of reasons. The issue with runs bigger than 1000 pages is that certain users run the bot against more-or-less random categories and it hogs the bot for a really long time, at the expense of other more targeted runs. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:34, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Headbomb.

Last year, I reported several times on how Abductive was abusing Citation bot by running huge, untargeted runs on categories, which generated very low returns. Abductive repeatedly argue verbosely that having the bot trawl through vast sets of pages where it had almost nothing to do was somehow an appropriate use of the bot. Many other editors pointed out how that was a waste of a precious resource, because the bot could otherwise be processing jobs with much higher rates of return, but Abductive just parroted slogans along the lines of "my job is as valid as anyone else's", completely ignoring the low productivity of his jobs.

Mercifully, in the last few months, Abductive stopped doing these low-return speculative trawls. But in the last week or so, they have resumed, with the same issues: most pages in Abductive's batches are not edited, and most of those which are edited have only trivial changes such as removing unused parameters or changing the style of quotation marks.

This is not a technical problem. It is a human problem of one editor who has a severe WP:IDHT issue, and the remedy is simply to ban Abductive from using Citation bot. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:44, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Oh, ok so its not a technical issue, rather with one person who is supposedly abusing the bot. I now understand. Well on Wikipedia, consensus is required, so if Abductive is using the bot in way that is unfair to other editors, and other editors tell him to stop doing it, then he should change or explain his behavior.

I do recall reading about this behavior in the talk page archives a while ago. User_talk:Citation_bot/Archive_29#Bot_still_being_abused_by_Abductive - not sure if it revelant. Regardless, this is a serious issue that needs to be discussed in its entirely. I think the previous thread was closed too early. Rlink2 (talk) 15:01, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

@Rlink2: there were at least half-a-dozen threads about Abductive's abuse of Citation bot, some of which were very lengthy. The issue has already been discussed in its entirety, many times ... and Abductive's tediously self-serving explanations have been heard and rejected many times.

The problem is well-documented, so there is no point in rehashing those discussions again.

Abductive is:

1. running low-return speculative trawls of categories
2. flooding the job queue with so many single-page requests that the other requests don't get seen, leaning to available slots going unused.

The only issue now is: will Abductive voluntarily desist from these long-running abuses of Citation bot, or do we have to ban Abductive from abusing the bot? BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:16, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

The definition of Abductive reasoning is to

start with an observation or set of observations and then seeks the simplest and most likely conclusion from the observations.

The observations are the following:

• Abductive continues to push through even though other editors tell them to stop. Per Wikipedia guidelines: Serious or repeated breaches or an unwillingness to accept feedback from the community (Wikipedia:I didn't hear that) may be grounds for sanction. if there are many threads regarding this, then it shows a repeated unwillingness to accept feedback, instead just pushing right through.
• This comment from Abductive stood out to me: The fundamental problem is that we have all been running the bot so much that is has fixed most articles by now, so that category runs aren't going to have a high enough rate of return.. So he acknowledged that the jobs was not useful, but yet when BrownHairedGirl asked why he is still wasting his time with the jobs, he basically had no response.

So the simplest conclusion is that either Abductive should stop the behavior or be banned from the bot.

Note that I am trying to stay neutral for now because I don't know the whole story. But it seems to be a "one vs many" situation, which Abudctive being the "one". Rlink2 (talk) 15:33, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

@Rlink2: the whole story is in the talk page archives, if yo have the time and energy to wade through it. It includes many occasions when I documented in detail how Abductive was abusing the bot, with links which make it verifiable.

One of Abductive's defences of this conduct is that they are using spare capacity in the bot, which would otherwise be wasted: better, says Abductive, to use it for low-return tasks than to have it unused.

That is superficially plausible, but only superficially. The flaw in this logic is that the unless the bot has spare capacity at any given moment, it cannot respond promptly to a single-page request by an editor who is using the bot interactively to assist in their manual work on a page. It may mean that the bot does not ever process that single-page request, because it times out before a slot is available.

So ... trying to use all the bot's capacity is actually a fundamentally bad idea. Like spaces in a car park or beds in a hospital, 100% utilisation is a nightmare of users. Spare capacity is what make the system usable.

It is this problem which @John Maynard Friedman (JMF) complains about, and righty so. The bot is an invaluable tool for helping to build complex citations while writing an article. See User:Headbomb/Tips and Tricks for examples of how it can help.

This ability of the bot to take an isbn or a doi or a handle and build a full reference to a book or journal is a huge timesaver. I often use it myself when manually filling the refs on an article (as I did 3 times yesterday), and in my experience 'it can save 5-10 minutes for each reference to a scholarly journal. (The complexity of those refs needs a lot of careful checking, so 5-10 minutes each is a genuine number).

Abductive's approach of using-all-the-bot's capacity makes to the bot unavailable for this sort of work, which actively sabotages the efforts of those improve articles. I thoroughly understand why JMF is so angry, and I share that anger. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:17, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

All that argument has merit but let's not lose sight of the main issue. If bot runs are restricted to 1000 edits, no matter who is making them or how lucky they feel, at least requiring their operators to take manual intervention every ten minutes might (a) give the rest of us some oxygen and (b) give them pause to consider whether there is not something more useful to spend their (and our) time on. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:02, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: as above, I have huge sympathy for your frustration about the unavailability of the bot to assist in manual referencing.

However, I am exasperated by your continued refusal to distinguish between productive and unproductive batch jobs. Your desire to punish those using the bot for productive batches is a vindictive and disruptive case of WP:IDHT.

Lemme explain. For 10 months, I have used Citation bot to fill WP:Bare URLs. I use a variety of tools to build and maintain lists of bare URLs, which I feed to the bot in systematic ways designed to minimise re-processing of articles. I also tag bare URLs of types which the bot cannot fix (see e.g. the 38,000 article which use {{Bare URL PDF}}). I also follow behind the bot to use other tools to fill ref which the bot fails to fix, and to identify websites where the can fill refs ... and I have developed a bunch of tool to identify and tag dead links: in February alone, my tools identifies and tagged over 60,000 bare URL refs which were actually dead.

This work by me takes many hours per day of list-making, tagging and programming. I estimate that in the last ten months, I have put over 3,000 hours of work into this task.

I have put in that time because it is getting results. At the start of May 2021, there were ~470,000 en.wp articles with bare URL refs. Now there about 140,000. That fall of ~330,000 masks the real progress, because new bare URLs are added at a rate of over 300 per day. So without this work, the tally would have grown by ~90,000, meaning that about 420,000 pages have been cleaned up.

Note that many of those pages contained multiple bare URLs, so the total number of bare URLs filled by this work is over a million.

I do not want any praise or thanks for this. But I am angry at your contemptuous desire to sabotage this work.

I try to keep Citation bot filling bare URLs 24 hours per day, and I do that by structuring my days so that I available to start a new batch when one finishes. That means keeping my laptop open while I do other task, and it often means setting alarms so that I wake in the night to start a new batch.

Your call for me to manually intervene every ten minutes would allow me to run these big batches only if I never slept, or did anything which took me away from my desk for more than ten minutes. Since that is impossible, the effect of your proposal would be to allow me to set Citation bot to fix bare URLs for only about 4 or 5 hours per day. That would be possible only if I took on a big extra burden, and even so it would reduce the productivity of this task by about 80%. It's slow enough already, so I would simply stop this work.

If you genuinely think that me using the bot fill about a million bare URLs is silly and that I should "find something more useful to spend my time on", then please say so directly, and we can discuss whether there is consensus for your view. Please note that both @Headbomb and @AManWithNoPlan also run a lot of targeted, productive batches, so your approach would also sabotage their work.

This is far from the first time when you have failed to acknowledge the distinction between productive and unproductive batch jobs, and have chosen instead to lash out indiscriminately, lumping those of us who target the bot efficiently into te same category as those who waste the bot's time. That distinction has been pointed out to you many times, and it is made clear in his thread, but yet again you choose to ignore it. Damn you. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:58, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

I intended no contempt nor, on re-reading, do I see any reasonable inference of such. Yes, I totally understand your frustration that the behaviour as you see it of one bot operator is bringing all operators into disrepute. Yes, I notice that your runs have generally brought improvement to pages I watch. But looked at from the perspective of the many who want to validate the citations in an article they have worked on, the fact that they cannot do so appears to be caused by a much smaller number of bot operators. It is impractical for me to make a value judgement between operators and I consciously choose not to try. It is not obvious to me why a limit of 1000 articles per run will bring your work to a halt, only that you will have to keep restarting it.

The other option of course is to formally request that Abductive's bot privileges be withdrawn but that will take time. John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:49, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Nonsense, @John Maynard Friedman. It is perfectly practical to make distinction between bot operators, by analysing the number and value of the edits make in each batch. I set out that data in an about half-a-dozen threads last year.

I understand your frustration. But you repeatedly choose to ignore the evidence of the cause of that problem, and instead you lash out indiscriminately, and advocate solutions which would sabotage most of the productive work of the bot. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:15, 15 May 2022 (UTC)