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

Please click here to report an error.

Or, for a faster response from the maintainers, submit a pull request with appropriate code fix on GitHub, if you can write the needed code.

I know this is a minor bug, but it bugs me. I know that the bot is written to make an attempt to duplicate the formatting already present in the ref. How it could have failed here, I don't know. But more importantly, it should default to the consensus ref formatting: space,pipe,parametername,=,parametervalue. (Spaces before pipes, no spaces around the equals signs or anywhere else, except perhaps before the curly end brackets if there already was a space there.) Abductive (reasoning) 03:24, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. The default should be space,pipe,parametername,=,parametervalue. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:27, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Cannot fix since the the bot already uses the existing citation template as a guide. Templates that are mixes in spacing such as these cannot be done in a way that makes everyone happy. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:45, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

But how to explain the example? The bot deviated from the format of the ref it edited? Abductive (reasoning) 16:59, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I see, you want the bot to add spaces to existing parameters - in particular the last one. Interesting, the bot by default does not in anyway modify spacing of existing parameters. That parameter has no trailing spaces. As far as the bot in concerned there are no spaces before pipes, just spaces at the end of parameters. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:14, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The bot must have looked at the lack-of-space of the last parameter (before the end curly braces) to come to the conclusion that the ref was formatted that way. Perhaps it should look after the "cite xxxx" for the cue? Abductive (reasoning) 17:51, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

not, that is not what it did. It simply does not change the spacing of existing parameters. The existing final parameter has no ending space, so the bot does not add one. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:14, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see what you are saying. It slotted it in at the end. Well, I had hoped that the bot could have provided a cure to the annoying new habit of users removing all spaces from refs, making a wall of text for editors. Abductive (reasoning) 22:25, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And creates annoyingly unpredictable line wraps. Does this format really have consensus? If so, bots (any bot) could create a cosmetic function for citations they edit. -- GreenC 17:04, 6 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There are some people who like the "crammed" format. I started a conversation about the formatting here, but I don't really understand what they were saying. Abductive (reasoning) 02:06, 7 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As Abductive suggests, what the bot should do ideally is to check if the first parameter's pipe following the template name is preceded by a space (or even better, if at least one of the parameters' pipe symbol is preceded by space) and if it is, it should add a space in front of pipe symbol of newly inserted parameters, no matter where they are inserted into the parameter list. If the template has no parameters yet, the bot should fall back to the "default" format "space, pipe, parameter name, equal sign, parameter value" we consistently use in all CS1/CS2 documentation and examples. (Well, IMO, this latter format would ideally be made the only format used at all, but that's a discussion beyond the scope of CB issues here.)

Yeah, it is only cosmetic, but like Abductive I too find it somewhat annoying when previously perfectly formatted citations become misaligned by bot edits.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 13:34, 7 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

While I agree, this is actually going to be hard to implement. I will need to think about it. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:12, 8 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Still thinking about how to do this. It will have to deal with figuring out what the last parameter before adding a parameter to the very end, but no the middle. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 00:51, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I ran into this same problem with my bot, I solved it by never adding a new parameter in the last position. It requires a function to determine what the second-to-last parameter is and assumes a library that supports placement of parameters. -- GreenC 18:25, 24 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

URL is better unless the identifier auto-links. Nemo 22:10, 21 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

what do you mean by "auto-links"?  — Chris Capoccia 💬 15:22, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Some identifiers can automatically add themselves to the title, when |muse-access=free is present with the |muse=12345678. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:02, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a particular reason why the bot is changing references using the cite web templates for articles on Billboard's website to cite magazine? The print magazine is not being cited. Even when I corrected the change on an article, the bot came back and changed it to cite magazine again. -- Carlobunnie (talk) 01:00, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Online magazines are still magazines. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:07, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sure yes, but the cite web template is also still correct/applicable so where is the need to change it? Why doesn't the bot change all Time or Variety refs to the cite mag template also? My thing is that it's weird and inconsistent and unnecessary. -- Carlobunnie (talk) 00:06, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why does citation bot add italicization to Associated Press and Reuters as seen here? Our own articles about those news agencies don't italicize them. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 02:58, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, fourthords,

You might try asking the bot operator. Being a bot, it won't be replying to inquiries here. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:43, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Since my inquiry was about this bot's edits, this seemed the most appropriate place to ask. Apparently plenty of editors (and possibly the bot's programmer, somewhere) are watching this page. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 17:22, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Because |agency= is to be used when the work of Reuters or AP (and other agencies) is republished in another publisher's work (typically a newspaper). When Reuters or AP (and other agencies) is cited directly, then the source is the 'work'. We cite the work not the corporate entity. The en.wiki articles are not italicized because the articles are about the corporate entities. In both of these cases, the corporate entities have eponymous websites that are the sources so those names go in |work= when citing their articles directly.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 03:58, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Should, then, this script not be performing its edits in contravention of this bot? — Fourthords | =Λ= | 17:22, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Associated Press is an organization, not a collection of documents, and should therefore be listed under |via= or |publisher=, not |work=. Organization names are not italicized; periodicals, edited volumes, websites, or other collections of documents are. The current name of the collection of documents that the Associated Press publishes appears to be AP News. If "Associated Press" is being used in the work parameter, it is being used incorrectly there. If the bot is moving "Associated Press" to the work parameter without changing it to "AP News" or some similar name for the work rather than the organization, it is doing the wrong thing and should stop. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:59, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, that seems to be in contravention of what Trappist the monk (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) said, [AP and Reuters] have eponymous websites that are the sources so those names go in |work= when citing their articles directly. Is there an explicit MOS or guideline that says one way or another, then? — Fourthords | =Λ= | 19:19, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I presume that Editor David Eppstein did not intend to write: Organization names are not capitalized (emphasis added)

Editor David Eppstein and I rarely agree on anything but in this case, for the most part, I think that we agree. The Associated Press is an organization, my term was 'corporate entity'. We don't cite organizations or corporate entities, we cite their work. The Associated Press has an online presence at AP News (I hadn't bothered to look – Reuters has an eponymous online presence). That name for the collection of documents is italicized when one of the documents that it holds is cited. AP News is sufficiently similar to the corporate name that it is not necessary to write |publisher=The Associated Press (|via=The Associated Press should not be used for work distributed from AP News because AP News is the publisher's outlet).

I do not know of any MOS or guideline covering this though the topic is surprisingly volatile with entrenched camps on both sides of the italic/no-italic divide. There is some, reasonably stable text at Help:Citation Style 1 § Work and publisher.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:19, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Typo fixed; I meant "italicized" not "capitalized". —David Eppstein (talk) 20:23, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I really don't see the point of encouraging editors to install the gadget when most uses of it end in failure, which has been my experience every time I've tried to use it this week. At the same time, I have no problems running refill, so it is not toolforge. Can we have a completely separate process instance for gadget users please?, and let the batch runners fight it out between themselves. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:57, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"it is not toolforge": that it is incorrect. When Refill is being used by several people, it fails also. That tool has way too many bugs to run as a bot, which is why it is used so much less. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:47, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

a second instance would be very nice just for the gadget. Someone with access to toolforge would have to do it. Once spawned, I could modify the code to refuse non-gadget runs on that interface. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:51, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

and a third instance would be very nice for single pages too. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:26, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If you were to create another bot, for argument let's call it CitationBatchBot, code-identical to the current bot, would that de facto create another instance without needing to hack toolforge? The very few batch users could be 'persuaded' to use that one, leaving the original for gadget and command-line (sic?) editors. True? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:06, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Someone with access would need to do this. I do not have access and my toolforge account is in some weird limbo state and unusable. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:10, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is super annoying. There's no reasons for those pages to be skipped. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:28, 27 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Template would be dangerous, but drafts probably need the bot more than anything else. Will do. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:37, 27 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why would allowing the bot to run on templates be dangerous? It seems to me, possibly somewhat naively, that it would be harmless at worst (since it would make no changes to the vast majority of templates that contain no references within themselves), and beneficial for those templates that do contain their own references. Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 22:18, 27 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Example diff (second change). When a domain has been usurped it is replaced with |url-status=usurped and sometimes the |title= also contains usurped content. My bot is able to detect keywords that indicate a usurped title, but unable to determine a correct replacement title, so it adds the placeholder |title=usurped title. This placeholder was also discussed at CS1|2 help. It would be great if Citation bot was able to recognize the placeholder and fill in a better title. It would require using |archive-url= as the source since the |url= is usurped. There are not a huge number (197) but they are growing indefinitely due to the WP:JUDI case. -- GreenC 19:31, 27 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Good point, @GreenC.

I had been thinking about a similar issue: InternetArchiveBot's addition of |title=Archived copy when it archives a URL which lacks a title. That usage is categorised in Category:CS1 maint: archived copy as title, which currently contains over 160,000 articles.

In both cases, a remedy will require analysis of the archived copy of the page. Whether the generic title is |title=Archived copy or |title=usurped title, the same remedy is required ... so the two should be treated as one task.

I would much prefer that this was done by a new standalone bot, rather than incorporated into Citation bot. Citation bot is way overloaded even with its current task set. Adding in the huge backlog of generic titles would swamp Citation bot.

And in any case, I don't see any overlap between this task and Citation bot's other functions. This generic titles task does not need to add a cite template or change its type; all it needs to do is to change the value of |title=. The lookup of the archived title is not part of Citation bot's current capabilities.

So there is no benefit to including this in Citation bot, only downsides. This needs a new bot. I suggest a request at WP:BOTREQ. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:02, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Dealing with the backlog could have its own dedicated bot, but there's no reason not to have this covered by Citation bot. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:46, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Headbomb:: as I explained above, there are two good reasons not to have this covered by Citation bot:

1. Citation bot is already way overloaded. Adding another task will make that worse.
2. Direct lookup of title has never been part of Citation bot's function. It does lookup only indirectly, through the Zotero servers. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:58, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If Citation bot wants to do "Archived copy" as well, great. If the concern is someone will submit a 160k job and swamp the system, blacklist the tracking category as input and let the bot do it incidentally while doing other jobs. While it whittles away. People have talked about a dedicated title bot forever. Citation bot already does titles (I think?), getting it from Wayback Machine is the same: <title>Page Title</title>. -- GreenC 06:19, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@GreenC: your suggested backgrounding of this task would involve a lot of extra programming to Citation bot, which may not be compatible with its existing queue structure. And even if backgrounded, it would still be adding load to an already overloaded tool. In the last six months, there have been many discussion here about how to reduce that overload; adding to the load only make te prob worse, and your idea of

Blacklisting the tracking category would be a truly terrible idea: it would lock Citation bot out of any work needed on ~3% of all en.wp articles.

As above, Citation bot gets titles from the Zotero servers. Direct lookup from the Wayback Machine would be new functionality ... and the Zoteros are also very overloaded, so even if they could be pointed at the Wayback Machine, that would just exacerbate the overload.

There is zero advantage to bolting this function onto Citation bot, because it would all be new functionality; and there are huge downsides. This needs a new standalone bot ... and I think I may know the person who can do it. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:16, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Blacklisting the category means that no one could request that the bot runs on 160K articles at once. This is already done. As for "would involve a lot of extra programming to Citation bot", let's let AManWithNoPlan decide on how feasible this is, since he's the coder. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 08:46, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Headbomb: As above, blacklisting the tracking category would lock Citation bot out of any work needed on ~3% of all en.wp articles. That would be highly disruptive.

In the last 5 months, there have been repeated discussions about how overloaded Citation bot is. The latest such thread (see above: #And failure is the usual option again) was started less than 4 days ago by @John Maynard Friedman, who is understandably miffed at the lack of spare capacity in Citation bot. John wants clones of Citation bot to spread the load; that's a great idea in theory, but the bot maintainer has explained yet again why that is very unlikely to happen. So, dumping a backlog of 180k pages onto Citation bot is a recipe for perma-bottleneck. Even if the backlog was throttled to 500 pages per day, that's 360 days of increased overload.

So why on earth not just give this job to a separate bot? BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:09, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"As above, blacklisting the tracking category would lock Citation bot out of any work needed on ~3% of all en.wp articles." No it would not. You do not seem to understand the concept of a category blacklist here: The forbidding of doing a dedicated run on Category:Foobar. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:13, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Headbomb: Thanks for finally explaining what the narrow meaning which you placed on the concept of "category blacklist" in this context.

Any such crude "category blacklist" would be pointless if implemented a ban on any dedicated run on Category:Foobar, because:

1. It is superfluous. The maximum allowed size for category jobs is 550, and tracking categories for these two generic titles already exceed that size.
2. A ban on simply throwing the category name at Citation bot would be easily circumvented simply by listing the pages in the webform, or by using the "linked pages" feature on the webform.

The bottom line here is very simple. Citation bot is massively overloaded, and adding a big extra task will exacerbate that overload ... so give the job to another bot. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:23, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"adding a big extra task will exacerbate that overload" Tasks are given manually, subject to the usual limits. There's zero reasons why this task should be any lower priority than any other, save for your personal preference that other work be done instead. Things are not zero sum games, if another bot wants to tackle this, great, but there's zero reason to kneecap Citation Bot's usefulness on account of another bot. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:26, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Headbomb: this is not complicated, and the relevant afcst are not a matter of "personal preference":

1. Citation bot's capacity is already roughly fixed, and we are at the limit.
2. The other tasks which Citation bot is doing are almost entirely tasks which for which Citation bot is the only available bot.

So this is a sort of zero sum game. If we add an extra task to an overloaded bot, some of the existing tasks will suffer.

That is why I argue for a separate bot for the extra task: because it allows all the tasks to be completed faster, by increased the sum of throughput. It is quite bizarre that you choose to dismiss as "personal preference" my call for this extra task to be handled in a way that does not exacerbate a well-documented overload problem. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:45, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone is free to code an additional bot. Which is not an argument to kneecap this one's usefulness because you don't personally want it to do certain types of edits. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:47, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sigh. @Headbomb, please drop the aggressive hyperbole and the violent imagery. It is uncivil and disruptive. You have recently poisoned another discussion elsewhere with similar tactics; please refrain from repeating those hyperbolic falsehoods here.

Nobody, least of all me, is proposing to "kneecap" Citation bot. No reduction in its functionality is being proposed by anyone, let alone me. Kneecapping is a form of violent maiming which causes a severe reduction in capability, so labelling my objections as "kneecapping" is nonsense.

I have no objection in principle to adding extra functionality to Citation bot. My strong objection is purely pragmatic: that it would add an extra huge task to an already massively-overloaded bot. That would mean either glacially slow progress on the new task, or an worse bottleneck on the existing task. That is why I why I prefer to address the new task by creating new capacity.

I am surprised that you seem so determined to ignore the fact that Citation bot is already overloaded, or why you express that denialism by using such unpleasant imagery to misrepresent me ... but please stop. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:01, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"violent imagery" You really need to have a major WP:AGF/reality check re-calibration if you think any of what I said is remotely evocative of violence. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:04, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Calling the caped crusader

@Rlink2: if we give you a snazzy cape and your own special car, please can you help out here? Your mission is to make a new bot which takes any CS1/CS2 template with |title=Archived copy or |title=usurped title, looks up the linked archived copy, and extracts a meaningful title from the contents of <title>Page Title</title>.

Please come to our rescue! Your reward in gold will be in the usual place --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:28, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]