User talk:AManWithNoPlan

Hello! I generally put the names of newspapers in italics inside a citation for the publisher, (publisher=name here) similar to how they are displayed in Wikipedia article titles: The New York Times. Isn't italics for the name of a newspaper the norm/standard here? I haven't found any policy which states this explicitly, maybe can you point me to one for some clarity? Thanks! ---Avatar317^(talk) 23:35, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Could you point me to a specific example? AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:40, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Are you sure you don’t mean the |work= and its aliases such as |newspaper=? Such as

"title". newspaper. publisher.

AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:40, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

the publisher is ‘The New York Times Company’, while the newspaper is ‘The New York Times’. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:49, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have provided a diff for the edits, I had assumed it was happening on many articles. Here: ^[1] publisher=The San Diego Union-Tribune publisher=Forbes publisher=Salon publisher=San Jose Mercury News ---Avatar317^(talk) 00:23, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

The error is the use of the wrong template parameter. Publishers are not italics. Perhaps I should add a list of things put in publisher= that should be in work/journal/magazine/newspaper= (Which is automatically made italics) and fix them AManWithNoPlan (talk) 00:36, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Once this is merged in, the bot will start fixing the citations and converting select publishers to the work parameter, which automatically does italics. https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/1679 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 04:06, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Ah, that is what I was doing wrong, thank you for explaining that; I'll use those fields properly from now on. It would be good to improve the bot's behavior like that, because I would guess I haven't been the only one who mis-understood how to use those parameters. --Thanks!! ---Avatar317^(talk) 05:09, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Like with this edit on John Adams? That's about it. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 12:10, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

the magazine/newspaper/journal/work is the actual thing. The publisher is the corporation. So, for example a special commemorative child’s coloring book might have publisher=NYT, but it certainly does not have work=NYT. For example two, work=Life Magazine but publisher=Time/Life or something similar. Lastly when work=publisher, you don’t include publisher. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:38, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

for your work on adding new IDs like SemScholar to citation bot. This will be most useful for the broader vision of the WikiCite project. – SJ + 15:26, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Your hard work has not gone unnoticed. Thank you. Viriditas (talk) 07:31, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Hello, are you done with your large runs for now? (I ask because when you're done I want to refresh the OAbot queue.) From quarry:query/31224 I still see the usual ~44k articles: many are not fixable by citation bot (unstructured citations and such), but from a small sample I think the bot would make a successful edit on some 10-20 % of them. Nemo 13:18, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

my runs are all done for now. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:42, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Alright, thanks. Nemo 13:54, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

AMWNP, there is a similar issue occurring to the last time we spoke, with free full text links being removed at coprolalia and dementia with Lewy bodies. Last time, I didn't fully understand where to raise the issue, or what was causing it, but I recall that you or someone told me to add a comment in the URL field so it would not continue to be removed. Will these fixes at DLB work to prevent those URLs from being removed again, or do I need to inquire somewhere else? Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:36, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Also at another featured article, dengue fever. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:50, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

S2 actually has asked for the parameter to be added and for the urls to be converted. The comments should block to url to ID conversion. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:54, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for responding, AMWNP, but I don't understand any of your answer. Could you try rephrasing? For citation consistency, when free full text is available, it should blue link the title in the citation. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:11, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

semanticscholar has explicitly asked that semanticscholar urls be converted to the s2cid parameter (in fact, they pushed to have the parameter added). If you do put the link back (post-conversion), I suggest you leave the s2cid parameter in place.  AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:28, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

there is strong talk of making doi-access=free and such automatically add the blue links you love. I hope that gets done. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:53, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

OK, I think I am following you to be saying:

1. An independent organization has requested that we link directly to them. Why do we give them that authority? We will now have up to five links to the same information, which is clutter. Where should I ask this question, or do you happen to know the answer?
2. I should review my edits to make sure I didn't remove any s2cids, depending on answer to 1.
3. By adding a comment to the URL field, the URLs I add (which go directly to the PDF, which is not where the DOIs or S2cids always go) will not be removed by bot?

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:39, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

the owner of the website linked to, requested that we link to the ID instead of URLs. As for PDF vs landing page, most editors prefer a landing page since they generally are much less likley to atop working: a lot of scemanticschlor pdf links that i found when testing the conversion code no longer worked and redirected to the landing page. The second reason is that landing pages are geneally much quicker to load and much more handicapped accesible. Many people find downloading ANY file to be evil and will not do it. I personaly, usually read just the abstract. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:57, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Citation bot again. Thank you. Lev!vich 16:39, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

AManWithNoPlan, I'd like to see Citation Bot working productively, but it's currently unlinking citation titles that are not copyright violations. Would you please review the close of Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) #Issues raised by Citation bot and take steps to alter Citation Bot's actions to comply with the consensuses agreed there? I hope I don't have to reblock the bot to ensure it doesn't again breach those consensuses, but I will if it continues in its current form. --RexxS (talk) 13:50, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

I should be able to get this done today. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:15, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. If we ever get to the stage where the citation templates can find the the best online source and automatically link the citation title to it, there will probably be value in revisiting the bot's ability to weed out unnecessary url parameters. But for now, I think it best to err on the side of caution. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 14:46, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Are we still allowed to remove links to publishers, if doi-free is set? I am assuming no, but just wanted to check. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:57, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

I must admit I'm uncertain about that as I don't remember it ever being discussed. My advice is normally if in doubt, err on the side of caution, but if nobody has complained to you about removing publishers when doi-free is set, then it's probably not worth changing the bots behaviour in that case. I certainly don't have an issue with that personally. --RexxS (talk) 15:25, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

AMWNP, thank you for taking the time to do this. Lev!vich 19:27, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Why do you bother making edits like these ? The empty parameters text doesn't harm anything on those pages, and they make it easier to provide additional information if requested. Not that I necessarily care, but I am curious. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:23, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

There used to be issues, so out of habit. The issues seem to fixed now. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:28, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Please discuss your changes. Using a bot to edit war is disruptive. This article was PRODded recently, and is a real shame that nobody has ever come forward before to improve it, and the only edits are trivial ones that don't seem to benefit the reader. User:Beyond My Ken/thoughts#References sums up my views on this quite well. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 06:43, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Sorry about that. Not aware of reverts. Trying to fix all the google books. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:42, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

No problem. FWIW, I think it would be a nice idea if you had a user page that briefly summarised your intended changes with the bot, and why they are important to improve the encyclopedia. (Or is there a page there already, and I've missed it? Possible I guess). Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:01, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

we do have one, but I should probably put some text on the sandbox page for the specific things I have searched for and want to fix in a specific run, since the bot does so many things. Reverts go to the bot and i dont have access to that AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:05, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Or? please ping me if you have advice. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 15:19, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: it can be a little confusing. So much non-information within them. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:45, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree. Shame it can't be done automatically. I'm afraid I'll just have to use them as I see them. Doug Weller talk 16:36, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

unless you have (1) hand-checked that the new url gives exactly the same page as before and (2) you have changed the access-date parameter to reflect the new url.

There is no need to change a url which I have checked for myself, for one that hasn't been checked by a human at all. Various mistakes can and do get in. For what practical gain? It anyway falsifies the access-date parameter, which surely can never be legitimate.

It also means that I must thoroughly check for accuracy every time you do one of these edits. Regrettably, because I write articles with many citations, I have not time enough.

I appreciate what you are seeking to do in general, which is constructive.Ttocserp 17:52, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

If you mean these sort of changes, those are indeed exactly the same page as before, and simplifying the URLs have a slew of benefits, from increased stability, to being shorter when printed (and thus much less hard to manually enter inthe address bar). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:14, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

I mean changes which are indeed not exactly the same; why the theory doesn't always hold up as it's supposed to, is not my concern.Ttocserp 08:35, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

This url https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KVoKd9vDSxsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=J%C5%8Dch%C5%8D+canon+knees+triangle&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiO2cjY57bsAhUbaRUIHcbODgU4HhC7BTAAegQIARAJ#v=onepage&q&f=false gives the full text of an exhibition guide. Anything I do to reduce the URL just seems to reduce the visibility to one page. I'm worried that if I put it in an article, the bot will make the same error. Can you see what is unusual about it? Thanks. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:11, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

When I click on the simple URL, I get the table of contents. The dq= does not find anything. The hl=, sa=, and ved= are session specific. Post # stuff is all the defaults. The only this that has any effect is the printsec= that changes the table of contents into a front page. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:29, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll experiment some more. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 00:17, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

AManWithNoPlan tinkering with A Woman With No Clothes On? (Here.) It doesn't seem entirely proper. GrindtXX (talk) 20:16, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Age: old enough to remember when red states meant Russia and China.

Yep, I know what you mean.

Ddspell (talk) 21:04, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your help with the wrong url, and so sorry for the trouble! Thanks again. --Ash-Gaar (talk) 18:58, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for fixing the Google Book links in List of appearances of Bob Grant on stage and screen. I have edited that article a great deal, and yet, there are still things to correct! Wood and trees and all that. Best regards, Gricharduk (talk) 04:21, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi regarding your edit here at Antony Blinken, I was a little confused as to why you'd remove an archive URL there, as I thought WP:DEADREF encourages archiving URLs in sources.

Sdrqaz (talk) 16:15, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

The archive is a "Are you a robot?" URL, and not the real URL. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:18, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

I see, understood. I've replaced it with a proper archive URL now.

Sdrqaz (talk) 16:29, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

You are using Citation bot to change |publisher= to |work= for a variety of business organizations that are actually publishers, not websites or newspapers or magazines or works. According to ABC News, BBC News, CBS News, NBC News, and Reuters these are all businesses! They are not websites! They are not magazines! They are not TV or radio programs! Note: You seem to be correctly leaving Fox News as a |publisher=. Thank you for that.

You should be flipping these the other way, changing |work= or any of its aliases to |publisher= for ABC News, BBC News, CBS News, NBC News. When the news item is on Reuters' website, it's |publisher=Reuters, otherwise it's |agency=Reuters.

Also, you are using Citation bot to change certain newspapers/websites correctly from |publisher= to |work=, but in some cases leaving them in an incorrect form, such as [[New York Times]] or New York Times.com instead of [[The New York Times]]. Also, |agency=''(Boston Globe)'' was corrected to |agency=(Boston Globe), but should be further corrected to |agency=The Boston Globe, with "The" and without parentheses.

Yngvadottir: I think the comments we posted at User talk:Citation bot actually belong here. —Anomalocaris (talk) 11:01, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

I've addressed this WP:TALKFORK in great detail at User talk:Citation bot/Archive 24#BBC News et al (again).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:20, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Please stop running citation bot on Syrian Kurdistan. Levivich ^harass/_hound 23:52, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi, not quite sure what happened in this sequence of edits, but it changed the citation to point to the wrong ONDB article. I've reverted for now. MichaelMaggs (talk) 12:19, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Just in case you are wondering about the curious chapter-url= that you corrected at Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, it was indeed an error. The citations were originally given with one per chapter because the book is so enormous, but adopting the loc=[html option in {{sfn}} allowed it to be cited conventionally. Well, apart from failing to correct the chapter-url=, obviously. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:48, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

No, it was conspiracy after all (I mistook your edit as applying to a different citation which uses sfn, not this one, sorry). The citation gave the correct page but the wrong volume of Pickering, which is why it didn't address a chapter heading. The correct but unreconstructed citation is this, can you normalise it please? https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Statutes_at_Large_43_v_From_Magna_charta/XwbC08mcZ-4C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22An+act+to+prevent+acts+of+parliament+from+taking+effect+from+a+time+prior+to+the+passing+thereof%22&pg=PA32

The new Google Books interface is very hostile to amateur hacking: no obvious ID= any more. Much obliged and thank you in anticipation. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:27, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Very Hostile to everything..... AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:28, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Whenever I can, I try to use the version on archive.org but their search function is poor. Some you lose, some more you lose. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:07, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

I eventually cracked it by trial and error: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Statutes_at_Large_43_v_From_Magna_charta/XwbC08mcZ-4C?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA32 but have no idea how or why. Thanks anyway, your edit revealed a really silly error in the original citation. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 00:37, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Is there a setting in the bot that will flag its edits as "minor" so they do not appear in the watchlists of editors who filter out minor edits? Thank you.soibangla (talk) 00:20, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I wish...but there is no setting. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:08, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you again for your diligence in cleaning up many articles. When possible, please would you mark such edits as “minor” so they can be filtered from watchlists? soibangla (talk) 18:56, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Hey, could you please run citation bot here? Thanks! GagaNutella^talk 15:30, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi. Please do not use the Daily Mail as you did at White House COVID-19 outbreak. It is not a reliable source. See WP:DAILYMAIL. Kind regards, Robby.is.on (talk) 11:38, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

It is more reliable than the dead link that I replaced. I am doing dead link fixing and agressive saving to web.archive to avoid this type of problem in the future. Link rot is a pain. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:11, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

The DM shouldn't be used – that includes replacing dead links. I agree that link rot is annoying and fixing dead links is good. Happy editing, Robby.is.on (talk) 12:31, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

I might be in the minority, but I'm highly skeptical / suspicious / disapproving of mass additions of these links to articles as I explain here. Thus, I made this revert. Feel free to reply to the thread at User_talk:Tony1#Greetings if you wish, thanks. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts as they relate to the objections I raise with these links. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) 17:06, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

This should probably be discussed on the Bot's page (who is technically adding them) or in the citation template discussion area. There is a strong feeling that linking to lots of identifiers is a good thing every-time this comes up. I should note that the bot only add s2cid if they are legally licensed by the publisher, unlike other people who just add them wildly. Also, the bot does not add them if the citation has a pmc, free flagged doi, or free flagged jstor. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:16, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply and suggestion. What do you mean when you say "if they are legally licensed by the publisher?" Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) 18:37, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Citation bot actually uses the S2CID API to check the license status. Some stuff on S2 is web scraped (and of dubious legality) and some is licensed. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:41, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Hey there! Thanks for running Citation bot over Category:CS1 maint: ref=harv. I think the jobs that are currently queued up for the bot will exhaust what is possible with the current settings. To clear the rest of the redundant |ref=harv easily, a script or bot (or human) will need to find and remove them in CS1 wrapper templates. In the current population of the category (2,195 pages), I see:

• 386 that transclude Cite ODNB
• 60 that transclude EI2 (aka {{Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition}})
• 38 that transclude EI3 (aka {{Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE}})
• 102 that transclude DNB
• 104 that transclude Cite Catholic Encyclopedia (aka {{CathEncy}} and {{Cite CE1913}})

There are no doubt more. My script grabs anything that starts with "Cite", so I need to manually inspect each proposed edit, but those are some of the easy pickings. Are you able/willing to add some code to the bot that removes |ref=harv from those templates? If not, 2,000 is not that bad to do with a script. The bot has done an incredible job of reducing the population from 55,000 to 2,000 in recent weeks.

One more thing: the bot seems to be ignoring pages outside of article space. I don't know if that's intentional. I tried to feed a page full of Wikipedia-space links to it (191 pages), and the bot said "!No links to expand found".

Also pinging Deadman137, who has submitted the same category to the bot. I don't think submitting the category again will help unless the bot is modified to see the above templates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:04, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Browsing through some of the remaining articles for templates with ref=harv will turn up other templates and redirects that the bot appears to not know about. Just in the articles under "V", which have surely been looked at by the bot, I have stumbled across {{cite ebook}}, {{DNBIE}}, {{cite DCB}}, {{Cite Americana}}, {{Cite EB1911}}, {{cite techreport}}, and {{cite wikisource}}, all of which can safely have |ref=harv removed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:31, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

The linked pages API explicitly only does normal pages. The normal submit a thousand pages separated by pipe approach does not, since you are explicitly requesting the pages. The Bot used to use GET and limited the normal API to a couple dozen pages (it was a character count limit), now we use POST and a thousand pages will work. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 00:50, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Hi AManWithNoPlan, earlier today you edited an article I started to change a commented-out reference, removing a "ref=harv" parameter. It can't have had any impact on the article, so I assume this was some kind of mass correction. Is there somewhere I can read up on the fix you're working on? At the time I wrote it I must have thought the "ref=harv" was needed, though I stopped using the reference itself. Presumably that's changed. All the best, › Mortee _talk 21:59, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Good question. Recently, the ref=harv became the default for most templates (but not all). So, now including it is considered to be a mild error. Removing within comments has no effect on displayed text obviously, but prevents ref=harv coming back when someone uncomments it. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:23, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. That's helpful › Mortee _talk 22:43, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Actually you can set that to 2500 or even 5000 if your browser can handle it: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Citation_bot&offset=&limit=2500&target=Citation+bot Abductive (reasoning) 21:31, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

My brower can handle it, but around 1000 it gets really slow. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:35, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Basing it on diffs such as , , seem to suggest that the task is gone, or why else would the nobots tag be removed without consensus to do so? But Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Monkbot 18, User:Monkbot/task 18: cosmetic cs1 template cleanup, and User:Monkbot contain no indication that this task has been ended, and the last one still lists the task as active. Has something changed with the permissions to the project, or is it no longer allowed to block this task from being fulfilled, or is something else going on. Hog Farm _Talk 20:43, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

There was a huge battle over that task, and the task approval got voted down. Monkbot should probably update their page. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:45, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi, could you refrain from activating citation bot on (my) user space pages? I’d rather be the only one editing them, as, you know, their being in my user space would suggest. Best, Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 17:13, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I was cleaning up ref=harv on pages that have not been touched in a long time. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:16, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Hello!! Thanks for all the doi fixes you have been doing on Open ocean convection, and sorry for the trouble! All the references were generated automatically by visual editor, so I don't understand what I have done wrong. Could you explain to me my mistake in order to avoid these mistakes in the future? Thanks again!! Dandelion11 (talk) 18:03, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for a community good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 20:41, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi! What did you think of my draft article of the Statue of Mentuemhet when you looked at it? I'm still developing the article, so I would appreciate any potential feedback for future improvement. Thanks, Tyrone Madera (talk) 18:52, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

it is quite good actually. I do not have any suggestions at this time. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:09, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Good to hear! Thanks for looking it over :) Tyrone Madera (talk) 23:34, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Why would you remove a link to an open access article with the Wikipedia library that anyone can read if they have made 500+ edits with at least 10 in the last month and have been editing for at least 6 months, with a paywalled doi that requires an account to access? The beauty of the Wikipedia library is that it makes information that would otherwise be paywalled, open to anyone who meets the criteria. I don't understand why you would make this edit, but I didn't want to revert it without discussion. I'm not very technical, I am primarily a researcher/writer, so if there is a valid reason for this change, I need to know. Thanks! SusunW (talk) 21:03, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

The library does not want these links. They have even asks Bots to automatically remove them. Almost no visitors to wikipedia can use them. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:18, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for answering. Like many things Wikipedia it is illogical, especially since I am doing a series of articles and refer back to previous ones written. But who am I to question wiki-logic. Appreciate your patience in explaining. SusunW (talk) 04:24, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I see that Kaldari has retired. Does that mean you are now the sole maintainer of citation bot? — Epipelagic (talk) 01:26, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

i did not know he retired. smith acts when needed. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:29, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Well Kaldari has apparently retired and Smith has not communicated on citation bot for over a year. Is there any reason why two versions of citation bot can't be run simultaneously, with one version dedicated to batch entries, which would meet the requirements of users who want to make mass runs over categories, and the other version restricted to one page per run, which would meet the requirements of content builders. For a long time now content builders have been regularly frozen out as mass runs take over the bot for extended periods. Or is this a matter which is outside the area where you can operate? — Epipelagic (talk) 02:16, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I do not actually have a login to the tool servers and that is outside my area of expertise and do not have the time to come up to speed. But, it suspect that one of the problems is that the default configuration for PHP tasks is only a couple threads. It would be really easy to setup multiple servers that based upon the hostname would only do some things. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 00:50, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

So do you think it might be useful if I started a thread on the Village Pump, and see if something can happen from there? — Epipelagic (talk) 06:55, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Please do. Very busy myself. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:52, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi AManWithNoPlan

Please can you help me with a stoopid wee thing?

I see you have invoked InternetArchiveBot a few times, e.g. . I want to invoke InternetArchiveBot on Sonora, but can't figure out how to do so. The only interface page I have found is https://iabot.toolforge.org/index.php?page=runbotsingle .. but when I enter "Sonora" it says the page doesn't exist. When I enter en:Sonora, it says it processed the page and analysed zero links, but the page it reports is https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/en:Sonora, which is just a redirect.

Also, it seems there is a batch mode, which I also can't find.

Can you help? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:04, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

worked for me - no idea what went wrong. The IA bot has been "funny" lately. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:25, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Make sure that "enwiki - English Wikipedia" is selected in the dropdown at the top left of the page. It seems like you must have "metawiki - Meta-Wiki" selected there instead. And the batch mode for InternetArchiveBot is "Queue bot to run on multiple pages" in the "Run bot" drop-down menu (or, directly, https://iabot.toolforge.org/index.php?page=runbotqueue) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:31, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks, @Pppery. I hadn't spotted all the drop-downs, but with the help of your pointers it is now working for me. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:10, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Please stop erasing parameters off my bibliographic sources like editors, if these weren't "almost always necessary" then why would these parameters even exist? Including these does not affect the information conveyed in an article in any way shape or form, nor does it affect the experience of the reader: The most complete and the more information a bibliographic source has, the better; so please stop erasing parameters off my sources!

--The Exterminating Angel (talk) 23:37, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi, AMWNP. I notice you made an edit at Retrocomputing where your edit summary said something like, just doing to create archives. When I find the archived version of a webpage at web.archive.org is out of date, I manually get it make a new one and then cite that one. Does your method automate that process? Would it be better? Or, does it require the use of special tools (e.g., CiteBot)? Thanks! — SpikeToronto 12:10, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

The archive bot has an option to force archive creation, if they dont exist, for all live links. thsts what i did. unfortunately you have to manualy creat new ones on arcive.org AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:16, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Oh, that’s fine. I really don’t mind. I wonder, though, what makes the web archive fall behind. There was one page where the url was still live, yet the last archive at web.archive.org was 10 years ago. Thanks for the response! — SpikeToronto 14:29, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Hello, AManWithNoPlan,

I see you are working on improving this article which is good since it popped up on the "New Bad Articles List" I scan. Any ideas for a better article title than the current unwieldy one? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:27, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Not sure, I cleaned up the references a lot, but it seems like a generally horrible article. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:30, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I think an editor with less patience than you would have tagged it with a PROD. I can see the editor tried but it's rare that an editor with so few edits can craft an article that passes the New Page Patrol standards on the first try. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:39, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

I came there for the broken DOIs. It was only after I was finished with the refs that I really noticed the content :-( AManWithNoPlan (talk) 23:44, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi AManWithNoPlan, I was wondering why this bot changes the top level domain Google books domain from https://books.google.co.uk to https://books.google.com/books . Why do that exactly. scope_creep^Talk 12:20, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

The bot has done this for a very long time. The purpose is to put the URL into the canonical form. Generally, this URL works well no matter where in the world you are, unlike country specific ones. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:36, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Well, the bot should stop now, whether it's been doing it for a long time or not, unless you can point to a solid editor consensus that this change is either necessary or wanted (presumably you got authorisation for this bot task?). Gbooks (normally) automatically changes the domain based on your IP address when you access the page, so this kind of edit seems pretty pointless; if you want to ensure that the page displays in English, add &hl=en to the url. However, this edit was apparently made by you personally. Would you kindly make sure that such edits are wanted before making any more of them? Thank you, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:32, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

The concensious is before my time. The dot com domain is vastly more reliable than the country specific ones that often dont work for much of the world. If you have concerns i suggest you bring it up on the bot talk page. It get discussed about once every couple years. The URL cleaning and coversions are critical as google moves to its new book archeteture. Sorry for bad spelling on phone AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:07, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

I thought after writing that request that I might have phrased it a bit more diplomatically. So thanks for responding to the spirit rather than the letter. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:08, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi, could you please explain what do you mean here with my toolforge account is in some weird limbo state and unusable? As far as I can see, you have a developer account AManWithNoPlan, which has access to the Toolforge project but is not a member of any tool account. Majavah (talk!) 16:01, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I cannot login. Nor can I reset my password. I am assuming that my UserID is AManWithNoPlan. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:19, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Wait a second, let me check my phone for the password. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:22, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I am in. No idea why password reset does not work. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:24, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I am now in with SSH, but naturally not any tools. @Majavah AManWithNoPlan (talk) 16:36, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi, AManWithNoPlan. Can you anonymize references on the page Shivaji? I don't know how to run the bot. Akshaypatill (talk) 20:50, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you very much, AManWithNoPlan. Akshaypatill (talk) 04:04, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi,

I see here you have manually replaced Template:cite pressTemplate:cite press (a redirect) with its target Template:cite press release. As you probably know, this is a trivial edit (not changing the resulting, presented page in any way) and so deemend trivial and undesired. I propose you skip such edits. Or are there reasonings I did miss? -DePiep (talk) 06:19, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

It is considered a clean-up task. Cite Press is particularly problematic, in that it is not clear to an editor if it is actually cite news or cite press release. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:07, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the cleanup! FYI, for some reason the citation templates do not accept dashes in ISSNs. Per Civil War project guidelines, I should have included url-access paramater with pay/subscription urls, so I have rewritten them and added subscription status to reference (some students/non-profit researchers have access to Muse ENSCO, JSTOR, Haditha, etc.) Thanks again! Boo Boo (talk) 17:09, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

AManWithNoPlan, if AutoEd put a dash into |issn= without your intervention, please file a bug on its talk page. It should not do that, since only a hyphen (or nothing) is valid in that parameter. It's not a numeric range. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:16, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

It was https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Benutzer:TMg/autoFormatter.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript tool AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:21, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for always cleaning up my text! Deamonpen (talk) 16:51, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Hello, AManWithNoPlan. Please look at the changes you made to simple:Mimmi, simple:Dulce Amor, and simple:Donde Quiera Que Estés. Each of those changes introduced duplicate template parameters. Please check for that kind of thing when you make changes to template parameters. Thanks.

Also, please reconsider redirecting your talk page at Simple English Wikipedia. If you are active there, it would be helpful for people to be able to contact you there. In addition, automated processes will not see the redirect and will leave messages there anyway.

Please ping with any response. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 21:56, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi there! :-) InternetArchiveBot seems to have a bug that makes it stall on pages with huge numbers of refs (some further discussion here), and it appears that your batch job #9588 has gotten hung up on a whole clump of such ref-saturated articles, tying down one of the bot's channels in the process. Would you mind please killing that batch job and creating a new batch job for the remainder of the list (minus the huge ones)? Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 15:11, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

I don't quite see the point of this edit. Updating the date makes it look like the doi is only recently broken (and thus might have some hope of it coming back online). Surely it is important information for anyone thinking of trying to fix it to know how long it has been broken for. SpinningSpark 10:29, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

The date is a last checked date, not a broken since date. The since date is almost always the published date, since with a very few exceptions, they never work. The date change is an effort to re-check them all before i go through and manually verify the publisher actually claims them. if not, then delete. if yes, then report. it is a thankless task, but i have gotten over a thousand fixed over the last couple years of doing this evey six to eight months. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:39, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Fyi, I already reported it using the form the doi leads to. SpinningSpark 14:16, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your diligent work in cleaning up articles! Deamonpen (talk) 02:16, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out the ISSN issue. I was wondering about it. Now it is clear as you have demonstrated that that the first issue of the journal has ISSN 0857-3931 and the next one became 0857-3932. This is definitely not a valid ISSN.

Taweetham (talk) 06:48, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Please check your work after using Citation bot. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:48, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Is it common practice for citation bot to make changes to user namespace pages? – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 13:43, 28 October 2022 (UTC) – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 13:43, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Script error. Stopping. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:45, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Citation bot seems to have reintroduced replacement characters into cites after they've been manually fixed. All the ones I've spotted so far have been after bot initiated by one editor who has corrected at least one himself, with ES "weird". Eagleash (talk) 13:58, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

I notice that you have deleted some 60+ citation links (seemingly mostly to citeseerx.ist.psu.edu). (It didn't appear to me that this was a citation bot issue, but maybe I don't know how to determine that).

In any case, based on a sample of a couple of these links, there seem to be working versions of these available from wayback archive. Is there any reason not to replace those with archive links? Fabrickator (talk) 21:19, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

AManWithNoPlan, please do not simply delete URLs for dead links. See WP:DEADLINK for instructions on how to deal with them. This sort of edit is usually better, and of course a proper citation template is usually best. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:53, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

From this bunch, here is a second one that I have fixed (but there are dozens more): 04:06, 11 November 2022 edit of Content Similarity Detection. This one demonstrates stacking of erroneous edits. Fabrickator (talk) 04:32, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

There are 53 articles for which the string "downloadsexceeded" was erroneously inserted into a url for domain "citeseerx.ist.psu.edu" (this is the only domain associated with this string). In at least some cases, that's the way the url was originally inserted into the article (with the result that there's no url available that can be used to find a copy in the Wayback archive, and without other information, locating an article with the intended content is likely to be difficult). Fabrickator (talk) 07:16, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

There I was, citing a journal article and as usual, the list of authors goes on and on. So I decided to just use authors= to put it in as is, in the fond belief that CitationBot will surely come and clean it up, saving me the trouble of doing it by hand. Well it added bibcode etc but studiously ignored the list of authors.

Just thought I might mention it, on the off chance that you are idly filing your nails, eating chocolate, looking out the window, just waiting for the phone to ring. . Yes, I know, as if! 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 00:52, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

That will never be done, since "correcting" human input authors will cause more anger than you can possibly imagine. The best bet is to remove the author item and then run the bot. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:14, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

AManWithNoPlan,
Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.
— Moops ^⋠T⋡ 17:05, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

   Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

— Moops ^⋠T⋡ 17:05, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I left this message for Smith609, who may not be able to repond, and since you are Thing 2 ;>) - I'll ask it here. If two major citation styles are present in a 200-citation article (see Hummingbird), I'm assuming that running the bot on the existing author formats would not convert them all to the one preferred style |last=

Is this assumption correct?

1. would each ref with Vancouver style author format need to be edited manually for the bot? 2. on so many references, the bot seems to run slowly. On what size portions would it be best for bot performance? 3. could the bot be modified (or a script created) to run on any article in edit mode to make all citations consistent in one style?

Thanks for your thoughts. Zefr (talk) 05:38, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Re-working authors is problematic and probably beyond the scope of a fully automated proceedure. Running in non-slow mode is much faster. Also, i can manually run much faster. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:01, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

A correction was made to Thomas Johnston (engraver) by CB suggested by you here/ Most of it is fine & correct but I am puzzled by the page range correction in a ref from pages=1020-1021 to pages=1020–1021. Template:Cite book#In-source locations states

pages: A range of pages in the source that supports the content. Use either |page= or |pages=, but not both. Separate using an en dash (–)

It almost looks like CB is converting en dashes to em dashes but I think maybe it is actually converting a hyphen to an en dash? I'd just like to know for sure. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 04:04, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

The bot comverted the text to maath thst which is displayed. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 07:45, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Maath. Ok... so it's converting it to a math symbol and that is maybe *not* an en dash? If editors are supposed to use this symbol when doing page ranges which symbol is it? I'd like to know so next time I craft a page range I can do it right. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 14:15, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

The new dash is an en dash. The original dash was a hyphen/minus sign. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:19, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for cleaning up the references in Charles Brenton Fisk! I did not even realize that there were issues. Carpimaps (talk) 13:38, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

... in Reform movement and Judicial reform of Alexander II. After spending so much time manually trying to spruce those up, it's lovely to see the job polished off so quickly. (I *must* learn how to use that bot!) – _•Raven  ^.talk 04:45, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Please do not use CitationBot to destroy a working link to the *complete* version of a public domain book, replacing it with one that doesn't, as you have now done twice in this article.Ttocserp 14:37, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

The new link is to a landing page that you can then click on the book to get the full version. I have replaced with a fully normalized link to the full version inside description. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 14:43, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

I've just reverted for a second time your change using Citation bot to a reference: Special:Permalink/1145340951 to Special:Permalink/1145136828

You changed:

| url = https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmniaf/928/928.pdf

to:

| chapter-url = https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmniaf/928/928.pdf

The url in question does not point to the chapter (Appendix 1) specified in the citation: it points to the whole document, so the url parameter seems to me to be the correct one to use.

As far as I can tell, your change is wrong. If I am mistaken, please explain.

Michael F 1967 (talk) 16:52, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for that report. It is really obscure, but I figured out what went wrong and have fixed it. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 17:59, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

No worries. I do not understand the usage of Wikipedia bots, but it seems to me that one thing which went wrong was you - the human in charge - not reading the reason I provided in my edit for correcting Citation bot's initial mistake.

But: no worries. Michael F 1967 (talk) 19:16, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Sorry to inform you that your bot's recent edit in Dzüko Valley was reverted by me. It was not intentionally done. It was necessary to restore the entire recent edits done by an edit warrior. So, yours was unfortunately but un-exclusively included. I want to request you to please re edit the page. Thanks! Haoreima (talk) 18:35, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Do you happen to have a regex or suggestion how to find Google Books URLs? I know of https://books.google.com/whatever and https://www.google.com/books/whatever but unclear about country-specific URLs? -- GreenC 13:21, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Here you go. These two. The second one covers books.google.com urls that are missing the /books:

https?:\/\/(?:|www\.books\.|books\.|www\.)google\.[a-zA-Z\.][a-zA-Z\.][a-zA-Z\.]?[a-zA-Z\.]?[a-zA-Z\.]?[a-zA-Z\.]?[a-zA-Z\.]?[a-zA-Z\.]?\/books 
https?:\/\/(?:|www\.books\.|books\.)google\.[a-zA-Z\.][a-zA-Z\.][a-zA-Z\.]?[a-zA-Z\.]?[a-zA-Z\.]?[a-zA-Z\.]?[a-zA-Z\.]?[a-zA-Z\.]?\/\?

Probably has one more "a letter or a dot" than needed, but paranoid.

One problem I do run into when fixed is [URL''title''] with no space, and the evil wrong pipe [URL|title]. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:47, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

I think this covers all of them:

"books.google.ac", "books.google.ad", "books.google.ae", "books.google.com.af", "books.google.com.ag", "books.google.com.ai", "books.google.al", "books.google.am", "books.google.co.ao", "books.google.com.ar", "books.google.as", "books.google.at", "books.google.com.au", "books.google.az", "books.google.ba", "books.google.com.bd", "books.google.be", "books.google.bf", "books.google.bg", "books.google.com.bh", "books.google.bi", "books.google.bj", "books.google.com.bn", "books.google.com.bo", "books.google.com.br", "books.google.bs", "books.google.bt", "books.google.co.bw", "books.google.by", "books.google.com.bz", "books.google.ca", "books.google.com.kh", "books.google.cc", "books.google.cd", "books.google.cf", "books.google.cat", "books.google.cg", "books.google.ch", "books.google.ci", "books.google.co.ck", "books.google.cl", "books.google.cm", "books.google.cn", "books.google.com.co", "books.google.co.cr", "books.google.com.cu", "books.google.cv", "books.google.com.cy", "books.google.cz", "books.google.de", "books.google.dj", "books.google.dk", "books.google.dm", "books.google.com.do", "books.google.dz", "books.google.com.ec", "books.google.ee", "books.google.com.eg", "books.google.es", "books.google.com.et", "books.google.fi", "books.google.com.fj", "books.google.fm", "books.google.fr", "books.google.ga", "books.google.ge", "books.google.gf", "books.google.gg", "books.google.com.gh", "books.google.com.gi", "books.google.gl", "books.google.gm", "books.google.gp", "books.google.gr", "books.google.com.gt", "books.google.gy", "books.google.com.hk", "books.google.hn", "books.google.hr", "books.google.ht", "books.google.hu", "books.google.co.id", "books.google.iq", "books.google.ie", "books.google.co.il", "books.google.im", "books.google.co.in", "books.google.io", "books.google.is", "books.google.it", "books.google.je", "books.google.com.jm", "books.google.jo", "books.google.co.jp", "books.google.co.ke", "books.google.ki", "books.google.kg", "books.google.co.kr", "books.google.com.kw", "books.google.kz", "books.google.la", "books.google.com.lb", "books.google.com.lc", "books.google.li", "books.google.lk", "books.google.co.ls", "books.google.lt", "books.google.lu", "books.google.lv", "books.google.com.ly", "books.google.co.ma", "books.google.md", "books.google.me", "books.google.mg", "books.google.mk", "books.google.ml", "books.google.com.mm", "books.google.mn", "books.google.ms", "books.google.com.mt", "books.google.mu", "books.google.mv", "books.google.mw", "books.google.com.mx", "books.google.com.my", "books.google.co.mz", "books.google.com.na", "books.google.ne", "books.google.com.nf", "books.google.com.ng", "books.google.com.ni", "books.google.nl", "books.google.no", "books.google.com.np", "books.google.nr", "books.google.nu", "books.google.co.nz", "books.google.com.om", "books.google.com.pk", "books.google.com.pa", "books.google.com.pe", "books.google.com.ph", "books.google.pl", "books.google.com.pg", "books.google.pn", "books.google.com.pr", "books.google.ps", "books.google.pt", "books.google.com.py", "books.google.com.qa", "books.google.ro", "books.google.rs", "books.google.ru", "books.google.rw", "books.google.com.sa", "books.google.com.sb", "books.google.sc", "books.google.se", "books.google.com.sg", "books.google.sh", "books.google.si", "books.google.sk", "books.google.com.sl", "books.google.sn", "books.google.sm", "books.google.so", "books.google.st", "books.google.sr", "books.google.com.sv", "books.google.td", "books.google.tg", "books.google.co.th", "books.google.com.tj", "books.google.tk", "books.google.tl", "books.google.tm", "books.google.to", "books.google.tn", "books.google.com.tr", "books.google.tt", "books.google.com.tw", "books.google.co.tz", "books.google.com.ua", "books.google.co.ug", "books.google.com.uy", "books.google.co.uz", "books.google.com.vc", "books.google.co.ve", "books.google.vg", "books.google.co.vi", "books.google.com.vn", "books.google.vu", "books.google.ws", "books.google.co.za", "books.google.co.zm", "books.google.co.zw", "books.google.co.uk"

Oh this is great, that would have taken a long time to figure out. Thanks much! -- GreenC 14:04, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

https://www.google.com/supported_domains seems to be pretty complete. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:52, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello, I was wondering if you could revisit this edit as it is missing the parameter name and causing a cite date error. Many thanks. Keith D (talk) 17:26, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you so much for helping me fix the citations in the article I was working on in my sandbox. You are a real lifesaver!!! You are the "man with the plan"!!! Garagepunk66 (talk) 22:53, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi. The reason I use the template redirect {{paywall}} in the Deaths in 2023 article instead of {{subscription required}} (and will continue to do so) is to cut down on the number of characters being used in the page coding, which as you will realise is already over-bloated by necessary descriptions used during entries, and other technical additions, which make up the list in its entirety. This is just by way of explanation - as the redirect produces the same message next to the source on tooltip hover [(subscription required)], I see no reason why the redirect cannot be of valid use in its shorter form. Thanks. Ref ^(chew)(do) 18:07, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

I found in my past tests that the pages statistics showed a very slight performance enhancement when the redirects were removed. Thst might not be true anymore. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 21:14, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for the reply. With such a long list as Deaths in 2023 (around this time of the month reaching its peak, with 30 days plus of entries) and associated archived months/years, the performance enhancement for the page (i.e. its loading time) is truly better the leaner the code within it becomes. That's the only reason I use 11 characters instead of 25 characters (inc. space) to denote a required subscription. I spend a lot of my time trimming source URLs, or taking out the trash (all the tracking code after the ? in a URL), and to me maintaining slim code as a whole is all part of that. (I also understand why you do the work you do on this, but massive lists really work better without unnecessary lengthening of the code.) Thanks. Ref ^(chew)(do) 23:02, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

7&6=thirteen (☎) has given you a Dobos torte to enjoy! Seven layers of fun because you deserve it. To give a Dobos torte and spread the WikiLove, just place {{subst:Dobos Torte}} on someone else's talkpage, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend.

~~~~ 7&6=thirteen (☎) 19:32, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Webservice request timed out

The tool responsible for the URL you have requested, https://citations.toolforge.org/process_page.php?edit=toolbar&slow=1&page=Foobar, is taking too long to respond. If you have reached this page from somewhere else...

This URI is managed by the citations tool, maintained by AManWithNoPlan, Dbarratt, Kaldari, Mattsenate, Maximilianklein, Smith609.

You may wish to notify the tool's maintainers (above) about the error. If you maintain this tool

The web service for this tool is running but cannot be reached. Please check the error logs of your web service.

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:51, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Rebooted. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 20:59, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Could you run the bog against that category? It's exceeding limits, and I'd rather not have to break it down in 12-14 parts and constantly monitor where the run it at over most of December. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:04, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Doing it now. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:02, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Those using Cite Q are not fixable. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 02:15, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-12-04/In focus, and hopefully the Wikidata people can get involved in clearing those out. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:19, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Is there something preventing editors from doing this to the {{Cite Q}} templates? I think they are an abomination, but they do accept normal CS1 parameters. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:05, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Cite Q is a fucking blight on the world. The real "solution" is to update things in Wikidata, but that's more or less impossible to figure out by the plebes (i.e. me). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:28, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Cite Q makes cite doi look like a gift from heaven in comparison. I think you might be able to flag the doi freeness in the Q meta data - but I have no idea if you actually can. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:22, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Another minor issue is the "#invoke:cite journal" used on the HUGE pages. But that is minor. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 13:30, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I just found out about {{Cite Q |Q15625490 |expand=yes}}, which makes it easy to convert Cite Q to Cite journal. It's great for resolving CITEVAR problems. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:53, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for getting that set straight! Looks like I had two revisions selected when I was looking at the diff, and missed the one that actually made the crazy change. -- Mikeblas (talk) 23:11, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

It was very confusing. Took me a while to figure it out. Thank you for reporting it. We like bug reports - even wrong ones - since we do not want to miss anything. Also, it got the fixed more. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 01:38, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for replying on the Leibniz integral rule Talk page and referring to a scrollbar setting for Safari on iPad. It would have heen very helpful, had I been able to find such a setting for iPadOS 17.2. But I have not, even after over half an hour of searching, and I am at a loss. [Yes, I know how to find “Instellingen”, “Algemeen”, “Scherm en helderheid”, “Toegankelijkheid”, ”Zoek”, etc. (Settings, General, Screen and brightness, Accessibility, Search”), which quite a few websites are referring to. But a “always show scrollbar” setting just does not appear.] I am abl, though, to do the horizontal scrolling (as well as the vertical scrolling). The screen just gives no clue as to the possibility of scrolling. If you are knowledgeable and have a good idea, that would be welcome. Would I need a software extension for such “luxury” functionality?Redav (talk) 04:27, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

you are absolutly correct. I could have sworn that setting was on my iphone, but it was my desktop safari. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:03, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

From what you have written elsewhere, I gather you have tabled (British English meaning) the subject to a forum where people with extensive technical knowledge may come across it and possibly offer a solution. Thanks for that. To be clear: scrolling (both horizontal and vertical) is active on my system, and I can scroll the equation horizontally, it is just the case that no scrollbar or any other clue is shown. Is CSS something that is easily invoked by a non-technically knowledgeable user like me?Redav (talk) 14:07, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

You very right about the scroll bars. It is really bad that the equation is cut so that it looks complete. Not sure on CSS. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 15:38, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Any progress on ? This seems a very low hanging fruit, just adapt whatever you have for & → & ? Headbomb (alt) (talk) 16:18, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Done. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 19:35, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

I was recently calling the bot mostly via https://citations.toolforge.org/ so don't have any new NULL DOIs so far locally accumulated. Do you have access to the NULL DOIs accumulated at citations.toolforge.org?

However, you you make replacements from POST to GET in the future, I will be glad to participate in testing and this way will get the NULL DOIs to accumulate.

Does it makes sense? Maxim Masiutin (talk) 11:35, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

they are also logged there. It is slowly becoming a database of slow websites. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:40, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! I explained that I run it via Toolforge here: User_talk:Novem_Linguae#Past issues with the citation bot

Still, please consider explaining an opportunity to query the bot version as I asked in User_talk:Citation_bot#Question on citation bot version on Toolforge and the gadget button

Thank you again for your development of my most favourite Wikipedia tool! Maxim Masiutin (talk) 12:05, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

AdsAPI keys

You wrote you implemented multiple AdsAPI keys, how can I suplly you mine?

Buy the ways, other APIs such as Semantic Scholar or PubMed you can request to increase limit and they increase without problem, but when I asked to increase AdsAPI they didn't reply although I contacted a few times. Maxim Masiutin (talk) 11:49, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, the do not seem to care. Right now is is passed to the bot on the URL or as a POST option ?PHP_ADSABSAPIKEY=123412341234abcd. It has now occured to me that this less than ideal, since GET is not supported for larger runs (it is a long story, but needed since GET is prone to running more than once as bozos refresh the page). AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:49, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! Let me test it, and I will let you know. Do you think that I should document it on the documentation page? Maxim Masiutin (talk) 15:29, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi AMWNP: If not already, I believe it is important to see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Coming_soon:_A_new_sub-referencing_feature_–_try_it! Citation bot will be particularly effected. Along with InternetArchiveBot, WaybackMedic, ReFill and many other tools and bots. WMF has been working on it for 10 years and is now close to going live. It will no longer be possible to parse all citations as a sequential string in wikitext, citations will be split into pieces, located in different parts of the article. The splitting can be haphazard, based on the whims of individual editors and articles. The pieces can be in free form text, not templated.

If this is a topic of interest let me know, I would like to develop some kind of tool-maker community around this issue. WMF is recommending we (enwiki) create a guideline page to help mitigate some of the issues. Most editors see the consumer end, those of us on the wholesale side processing cites by the millions have a different set of issues. -- GreenC 19:12, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

{{cite preprint}} is gone. It was a failed experiment. If we want a {{cite preprint}} template, we should create a native cs1|2 preprint template (regardless of whether the 'preprints' ever become 'prints'). At the time I created {{cite preprint}} there was only a very little desire to have it; that desire seems to have stagnated or dwindled. So I deleted it.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:11, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

This one could use some high-priority attention. Thanks. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:42, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Not that I feel super comfortable telling you what to prioritize with Citation bot since you do so much and there's so many items open, but I was looking at User talk:Citation bot#Feature requests and was really hoping the {{cite biorxiv}}/{{cite medrxiv}} stuff could be implemented (#9/#10) at some point in the not too distant future.

There's about 648 {{cite journal}} with |journal=bioRxiv and 8 with |journal=medRxiv, and at least 438 {{cite bioRxiv}} and 164 {{cite medRxiv}}. That would improvements to thousands of citations.

Anyway. Just a thought. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:06, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

You are removing a lot of information from citations which I had added to numerous articles. Specifically, I was always careful to specify the actual source of the article, because many people are unfamiliar with how to use OCLC and WorldCat.

If you're going to purge all that information and push the burden to users to do their homework, you need to get consensus for that first. As a WP editor with over 20 years of experience and an experienced researcher with over 30 years of experience (in over 50 libraries spanning the West Coast of North America from Vancouver to San Diego), I can tell you that many databases do not allow for direct external links to documents.

The last time I checked, Wikipedia does not require a direct database link to be available as a prerequisite to mentioning the database from which an article was obtained. If that has changed and I was unaware of that, please provide a link to the specific discussion, Manual of Style section, etc. Coolcaesar (talk) 23:55, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

The fourth round of the 2025 WikiCup ended on 29 August. The penultimate round saw three contestants score more than 800 points:

• BeanieFan11 (submissions) with 1,175 round points, mainly from sports-related articles, including 17 good articles, 27 did you know articles, and 9 in the news articles
• Arconning (submissions) with 1,090 round points, mainly from articles about athletes and politicians, including a featured article on Philippines at the 1924 Summer Olympics, 9 good articles, 28 did you know articles, and a wide assortment of featured and good article reviews
• AirshipJungleman29 (submissions) with 854 round points, mostly from a high-scoring featured article on the Indian leader Rani of Jhansi and two good articles, in addition to 13 featured and good article reviews

Everyone who competed in Round 4 will advance to Round 5 unless they have withdrawn. This table shows all competitors who have received tournament points so far, while the full scores for Round 4 can be seen here. During this round, contestants have claimed 9 featured articles, 12 featured lists, 98 good articles, 9 good topic articles, more than 150 reviews, nearly 100 did you know articles, and 18 in the news articles.

In advance of the fifth and final round, the judges would like to thank every contestant for their hard work. As a reminder, any content promoted after 29 August but before the start of Round 5 can be claimed in Round 5. In addition, note that Round 5 will end on 31 October at 23:59 UTC. Awards at the end of Round 5 will be distributed based on who has the most tournament points over all five rounds, and special awards will be distributed based on high performance in particular areas of content creation (e.g., most featured articles in a single round).

Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, feel free to review one of the nominations listed on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges – Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs), Epicgenius (talk · contribs), Frostly (talk · contribs), Guerillero (talk · contribs) and Lee Vilenski (talk · contribs) – are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck!

If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:47, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

I've managed to fix a bare URL which was originally a big report. Now I know how to use it. I've learned it all...

Source page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Citation_bot/Archive_41#Question WikiHelper3906 (talk) 15:38, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

The 2025 WikiCup has come to an end. Our top scorers, based on the tournament point rankings (which can be seen here), are:

1. BeanieFan11 (submissions) with 1,604 tournament points, will receive the 1st place award.
2. Gog the Mild (submissions) with 1,075 tournament points, will receive the 2nd place award.
3. Arconning (submissions) with 860 tournament points, will receive the 3rd place award.
4. History6042 (submissions) with 804 tournament points
5. Sammi Brie (submissions) with 635 tournament points
6. TheDoctorWho (submissions) with 386 tournament points
7. AirshipJungleman29 (submissions) with 373 tournament points
8. Thebiguglyalien (submissions) with 362 tournament points

Our high scorers in the final round were:

• BeanieFan11 (submissions) with 1,035 round points, mostly from 19 good articles and 21 did you know articles about athletes
• vigilantcosmicpenguin (submissions) with 819 round points, mostly from 13 good articles and 11 did you know articles about a wide range of topics from abortion topics to African cities
• TheNuggeteer (submissions) with 508 round points from 9 good articles, 4 good topic articles and 6 did you know articles mainly about Philippines topics, along with 19 good article reviews

The final round was very productive, and contestants had 2 featured articles, 4 featured lists, 106 good articles, 5 good topic articles, 178 article reviews, 76 did you know articles, and 9 in the news articles. Altogether, Wikipedia has benefited greatly from the activities of WikiCup competitors all through the contest. Well done everyone!

The top eight scorers will receive awards shortly. The following special awards will be made, based on high performance in particular areas of content creation. These prizes are awarded to the competitor who scored the highest in any particular field during the competition.

• Gog the Mild (submissions) wins the featured article prize, with 12 featured articles total, and the featured topic prize, with 9 featured topic articles in total
• Hey man im josh (submissions) wins the featured list prize, with 10 featured lists total
• AirshipJungleman29 (submissions) wins the featured picture prize, submitting the only featured picture in the entire contest during round 3
• History6042 (submissions) wins the featured content reviewer prize, with 127 featured content reviews. He will also share the ITN prize, with 20 in the news articles in total.
• BeanieFan11 (submissions) wins the good article prize, with 100 good articles total, and the DYK prize, with 147 did you know articles in total. He will also share the ITN prize, with 20 in the news articles in total.
• TheDoctorWho (submissions) wins the good topic prize, with 16 good topic entries in total
• Arconning (submissions) wins the good article reviewer prize, with 68 good article reviews in total

A special mention also goes to these users who scored the highest in a particular category in a single round:

• Sammi Brie (submissions), with 27 good articles in round 3, and 45 good article reviews in round 1
• Tails Wx (submissions), with 10 in the news articles in round 3

Next year's competition will begin on 1 January. You are invited to sign up to participate. The WikiCup is open to all Wikipedians, both novices and experienced editors, and we hope to see you all in the 2026 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement!

On behalf of the judges, Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email), Epicgenius (talk · contribs · email), Frostly (talk · contribs · email), Guerillero (talk · contribs · email) and Lee Vilenski (talk · contribs · email):

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:24, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2026 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor, we hope the WikiCup will give you a chance to improve your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here, and a bot will set up your submissions page within one day, ready for you to take part. Any questions on the scoring, rules or anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page.

For the 2026 WikiCup, the highest-ranking contestants will receive tournament points at the end of each round, and final rankings are decided by the number of tournament points each contestant has. This is the same scoring system that we had last year. If you're busy and can't sign up in January, don't worry: Signups are open throughout the year. To make things fairer for latecomers, the lowest-scoring contestants are no longer eliminated at the end of each round.

The first round will end on 26 February. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email), Epicgenius (talk · contribs · email), Frostly (talk · contribs · email), Guerillero (talk · contribs · email) and Lee Vilenski (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:37, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Welcome Back! we definitely missed you. Redalert2fan (talk · contribs) did a lot during your absence, but having 2 coders instead of 1 will definitely ber nice.

They implemented cite journal to cite biorxiv/medrxiv cleanups, but the opposite is tricky for them at the moment I believe.

Happy new year btw. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:26, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Hey, there. Just so you know, there's a discussion about the recent citation bot block over at User talk:Citation bot#Blocked; huge number of bad work= additions. Thanks, sjones23 (talk - contributions) 08:00, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

The first round of the 2026 WikiCup ended on 26 February. As some of you may have noticed, good article nomination reviews now receive 10 points, an increase from 5 points in the previous year, as per a consensus at WT:CUP. This point increase has been retroactively applied to all good article reviews for which competitors have claimed points in this round. Peer reviews, which continue to be worth 5 points, are now listed in the same section as featured article candidate reviews, rather than with good article reviews. Everyone who competed in round 1 will advance to round 2 unless they have withdrawn or been banned. No other changes to the round-point system have been made for this year.

Round 1 was competitive. Three contestants scored more than 1,000 round points, and the top 16 contestants all scored more than 300 round points. The following competitors scored more than 800 round points:

• Bgsu98 (submissions) with 1,467 round points, largely gained from 1 featured article, 5 featured lists, 15 good articles, and 42 FAC and GAN reviews;
• Olliefant (submissions) with 1,246 round points, largely from 4 featured lists, 9 good articles, 2 featured topic articles, 4 did you know articles, and 75 FAC and GAN reviews;
• Generalissima (submissions) with 1,095 round points, largely from 3 featured articles, 6 good articles, and 5 did you know articles;
• MCE89 (submissions) with 848 round points, largely from 1 featured article, 8 good articles, 1 did you know article, and 32 FAC and GAN reviews; and
• Rollinginhisgrave (submissions) with 838 round points, largely from 1 featured article, 8 good articles, 1 did you know article, and 14 FAC, GAN, and peer reviews.

The full scores for round 1 can be seen here. During this round, contestants have claimed 7 featured articles, 16 featured lists, 2 featured-topic articles, 168 good articles, 13 good-topic articles and more than 50 Did You Know articles. In addition, competitors have worked on 14 In the News articles, and they have conducted nearly 700 reviews. The tournament points table will be updated within the next few days.

Remember that any content promoted after 26 February but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, feel free to review one of the nominations listed on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:56, 27 February 2026 (UTC)