User talk:Citation bot

Note: See also how to prevent the bot from repeating mistakes. See also Help:CS1, and {{cite xxx}} documentation in general.

As of 2026, the active maintainer of Citation bot (merges pull requests on GitHub and does deployments to Toolforge) is AManWithNoPlan. The Citation bot GitHub is https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot.

Note that the bot's creator (Smith609), maintainer (AManWithNoPlan) and assistant (Redalert2fan) can go weeks without logging in to Wikipedia. The code is open source and interested parties are invited to assist with the operation and extension of the bot. Before reporting a bug, please note: Addition of DUPLICATE_xxx= to citation templates by this bot is a feature. When there are two identical parameters in a citation template, the bot renames one to DUPLICATE_xxx=. The bot is pointing out the problem with the template. The solution is to choose one of the two parameters and remove the other one, or to convert it to an appropriate parameter. A 503 error means that the bot is overloaded and you should try again later – wait at least 15 minutes and then complain here.

Submit a Bug Report

Please click here to report an error.

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

---

Feature requests

1. Implement support to expand from https://doi.org/10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U192476 to {{Who's Who}}
   Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Friern_Hospital&diff=prev&oldid=1167644213
2. Implement support to convert cite web to {{BioRef}} and {{GBIF}}
3. Use https://www.crossref.org/blog/news-crossref-and-retraction-watch/
4. journal/publisher that only differ by 'and' and '&' should be treated as identical https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Congenital_cartilaginous_rest_of_the_neck&diff=prev&oldid=1199200383
5. Free archive.org links such as curl -sH "Accept: application/json" "https://scholar.archive.org/search?q=doi:10.1080/14786449908621245" | jq -r .results[0].fulltext.access_url

URL removed

Status

new bug

Reported by

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

What happens

Bot replaces cite web with cite book, it removes the URL completely

What should happen

Nothing, the ref cited a Library Journal review that's listed on the Amazon site for the book, now it cites just the book, there's no link to click to see the review.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shatnerverse&diff=prev&oldid=1254239468

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Identical to § Changing every citation of a publisher's webpage to Cite book above. While the choice of formatting may be questioned (can't the Library Journal review be located somewhere less objectionable than Amazon?) the behaviour here is the same underlying misfeature of altering any webpage citation where a book's bibliographic information is presented, as if the citation was meant to be to content of the book rather than e.g. a publisher's blurb or library listing. I think there are more discussions of this in the talkpage archives here; I used to favour this feature, but I'm no longer so sure it's a net positive. Folly Mox (talk) 11:36, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Apart from User talk:Citation bot/Archive 32 § Web->Book: I don't think that it was right in this case... (May 2022) linked in the thread above, there was some conversation at User talk:Citation bot/Archive 39 § Introduces ref error when citing Penguin publisher website (May 2024). There could be others. I have to go to work. Folly Mox (talk) 13:01, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

author/first --> last/first

Status

new bug

Reported by

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

What should happen

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Same for author2/first2 --> last2/first2. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:21, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

web vs book

Status

new bug

Reported by

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

What happens

The bot reformatted citations to a website that has ISBN and OCLC numbers due to being derived from a volume of a book series.

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Penstemon_crandallii&oldid=1256314002

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

This is the same issue as § Changing every citation of a publisher's webpage to Cite book above (September 2023), User talk:Citation bot/Archive 39 § Causing template errors (November 2023), User talk:Citation bot/Archive 39 § A class of new(?) errors (November 2023), User talk:Citation bot/Archive 39 § Introduces ref error when citing Penguin publisher website (May 2024), etc. I believe most of the cases that cause template errors have been fixed this year, but the underlying behaviour has not. Maybe this exact class of parameters wasn't addressed because it includes both |website= and |page=.

TBH Citation bot is such a popular and high-volume tool that it might actually be worth holding a centralised discussion about whether this functionality is desired instead of having the same conversation here every few months. Folly Mox (talk) 14:14, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Same here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Root-finding_algorithm&diff=1263375628&oldid=1263149178&variant=en — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dominic3203 (talk • contribs) 01:56, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Amazon link bug

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

Converts conference citation to journal citation and changes title case

Status

new bug

Reported by

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

What happens

Special:Diff/1268341479

What should happen

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

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Half-assed conversion of cite web to cite journal

Status

new bug

Reported by

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

What happens

Special:Diff/1271282424

What should happen

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

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Patch1: PR 5651. This will block ORMS Today changes specifically for now. Not leaving similar conversions (if correct) in a broken or half-converted state will require more work and be included in a next patch --Redalert2fan (talk) 20:03, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

IAU Circular / CBET volume/issue/page

Status

new bug

Reported by

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

What should happen

, more or less

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

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

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

Status

more to do

Reported by

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

What should happen

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

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

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

Lecture Notes in Mathematics is a book series not a title

Status

new bug

Reported by

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

What happens

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

What should happen

Not that.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Book review confusion

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

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

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

Messed up book citation with title and chapter

Status

newbug

Reported by

Jay8g [V•T•E] 18:53, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

What happens

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

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

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

Unfortunately, the diff is no longer accessible, so we can't diagnose the bug anymore. Tagging this for archiving to clean up the talk page. New bug reports will be handled faster to prevent issues like this. --Redalert2fan (talk) 15:37, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

In that draft, Citation bot changed this:

{{cite book | last1=Judet | first1=Pierre | date=2014 |chapter=La "Savoie industrielle". Des territoires industriels en mouvements |trans-chapter=The "Industrial Savoy". Industrial territories in motion |chapter-url=https://shs.cairn.info/histoire-economique-et-sociale-de-la-savoie--9782600018289-page-245?lang=fr | title=Histoire économique et sociale de la Savoie de 1860 à nos jours |trans-title=Economic and Social History of Savoy from 1860 to the present | series=Publications d'histoire économique et sociale internationale |publisher=Librairie Droz | pages=245–297 | doi=10.3917/droz.varas.2014.01.0245 | isbn=978-2-600-01828-9 }}

Judet, Pierre (2014). "La "Savoie industrielle". Des territoires industriels en mouvements" [The "Industrial Savoy". Industrial territories in motion]. Histoire économique et sociale de la Savoie de 1860 à nos jours [Economic and Social History of Savoy from 1860 to the present]. Publications d'histoire économique et sociale internationale. Librairie Droz. pp. 245–297. doi:10.3917/droz.varas.2014.01.0245. ISBN 978-2-600-01828-9.

to this:

{{cite book | last1=Judet | first1=Pierre | date=2014 |chapter-url=https://shs.cairn.info/histoire-economique-et-sociale-de-la-savoie--9782600018289-page-245?lang=fr | chapter=Histoire économique et sociale de la Savoie de 1860 à nos jours |trans-chapter=Economic and Social History of Savoy from 1860 to the present | series=Publications d'histoire économique et sociale internationale |publisher=Librairie Droz | pages=245–297 | doi=10.3917/droz.varas.2014.01.0245 | isbn=978-2-600-01828-9 }}

Judet, Pierre (2014). "Histoire économique et sociale de la Savoie de 1860 à nos jours" [Economic and Social History of Savoy from 1860 to the present]. Publications d'histoire économique et sociale internationale. Librairie Droz. pp. 245–297. doi:10.3917/droz.varas.2014.01.0245. ISBN 978-2-600-01828-9. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:50, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

thanks, so the original trans-chapter and chapter are removed and the present title and trans-title is changed to trans-chapter and chapter. Redalert2fan (talk) 16:12, 28 December 2025 (UTC)

Added incorrect HDL

Status

new bug

Reported by

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

What happens

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

What should happen

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

Relevant diffs/links

Special:Diff/1302363847

Replication instructions

See this link

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Italic tags

Status

new bug

Reported by

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

What should happen

, , ,

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

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

Status

new bug

Reported by

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

What happens

"volume" changed to "issue"

What should happen

Not this. :)

Relevant diffs/links

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

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Associated Press

Status

new bug

Reported by

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

What happens

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

Relevant diffs/links

diff

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Properly TNT volume/issue for IUA Circular

Status

new bug

Reported by

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

What happens

What should happen

note the last change

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

url, chapter-url parameters

Status

new bug

Reported by

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

What happens

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

What should happen

nothing!

Relevant diffs/links

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

Replication instructions

The ones it got wrong were all Internet Archive links

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Advances in Enzymology and Related Subjects of Biochemistry not a journal

Status

new bug

Reported by

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

What happens

What should happen

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

@Headbomb: I see that Advances in Enzymology and Related Subjects of Biochemistry is indeed not a journal, but shouldn't it be the series? Although in that case the title and series will become the same like this edit.--Redalert2fan (talk) 19:11, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

There's bad metadata somewhere, which makes this particularly annoying. The last time I checked, and it was a while back, Advances in Enzymology and Related Areas of Molecular Biology and Advances in Enzymology and Related Subjects of Biochemistry are the same title/series/whatever, the series just got renamed as some point and you end up with titles from different era in the metadata. I don't remember which is new and which is old, or when the switch happened. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:18, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Ah I see, that makes it quite hard to sort it out correctly, I missed that they are actually not the same in the edit in my sandbox. Advances in Enzymology and Related Areas of Molecular Biology was already on the list for not a journal. I've added advances in Enzymology and Related Subjects of Biochemistry to the list so atleast it won't be added as a journal anymore.

Because of the bad metadata there probably are indeed more instances (or will be) where the title is one of them and the series is the other. That's not something I can fix. Redalert2fan (talk) 19:34, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Wrong URL

Status

new bug

Reported by

--JBL (talk) 20:20, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

What happens

adds the link https://figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/24870279 as a URL to citations of an unrelated book with which it shares a title

What should happen

not that

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

--JBL (talk) 20:20, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Incorrect ISBN

Status

new bug

Reported by

GreenC 07:36, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Special:Diff/1231476865/1321722265 .. incorrect ISBN. The correct isbn ends in "6" the one added ends in "0". They are hardcover vs. paperback. The page numbers might not align, the citation won't verify. It's better to have "no ISBN" vs. "incorrect ISBN", wait for future tools that can retrieve the ISBN correctly. An incorrect ISBN introduces ambiguity, it's no longer clear which edition is being cited. The existence of a URL doesn't resolve the ambiguity, because maybe the URL was added after the ISBN. Other tools add URLs to match a (wrong) ISBN, etc..

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Mangles cite web to cite book conversion by failing to change parameter names

Status

in discussion

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 08:33, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Mangles cite web to cite book conversion by failing to convert title/work to chapter/title

What should happen

In {{cite web}} templates, the specific location being cited is |title= in a larger work often cited as |work=/|website=. In {{cite book}} templates, this pair of parameters is disallowed. Instead, the different levels of material are |chapter=/|contribution=, |title=, and |series=. If the bot is converting a cite web to a cite book and can figure out which of the cite web |title=/|work= parameters corresponds to the cite book |chapter=/|title=/|series= parameters, it should change the parameter names. If it cannot figure it out, it should not perform the conversion, because leaving a |work= parameter in place creates an error and loses the information about what was in the parameter. The bot should never create errors and lose information.

Relevant diffs/links

An example is in the conversion of the template for the book What Is Data Science? in Special:Diff/1323850993. The basic idea of converting the template from cite web to cite book is correct. But the bot fails to do the conversion properly and borks the citation. It would be better for it not to have tried than to have tried and failed so badly.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Tracked in github.com
Issue #4829
Resolved

This seems like a very similar issue to one raised several months ago. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 18:54, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

Well, I did try to look through the old but still-open bug reports to find a match, but there are so many... —David Eppstein (talk) 19:08, 26 November 2025 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: Good news, this bug appears to be fixed -- see this test edit based on the diff in your example. Jay8g [V•T•E] 05:42, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

You also tested examples where the title= was the book title and the work= was a book series, and all the other permutations, I hope? Just getting this one example right isn't enough to be convincing. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:47, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Well, you'll have to find some examples of that... Jay8g [V•T•E] 06:29, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

So no, then. In that case I don't consider the bug fixed.

If you're going to convert cite web to cite book you need all cases correct, not just the one case that triggered the bug report.

Here's an example where cite web should be converted to cite book with the cite web title => contribution and the cite web work => series (and with the book title missing and to be filled in) from Wikidata (where it is given in CS2 form but with the cite web parameter set): Erxleben, Fredo; Günther, Michael; Krötzsch, Markus; Mendez, Julian; Vrandečić, Denny (2014). "Introducing Wikidata to the Linked Data Web". Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 50–65. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-11964-9_4. ISBN 978-3-319-11963-2. Retrieved 2024-08-18.

And here's an example where the conversion should go title => title and work => series, from Ricci curvature (where again it is in CS2 form but with the cite web parameter set): Najman, Laurent; Romon, Pascal (2017). "Modern approaches to discrete curvature". Lecture notes in mathematics. Springer (Cham). —David Eppstein (talk) 06:37, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

This is what the bot currently does for the first example diff and for the second example no changes will be made. Please check if this is the expected behaviour for the first example. For the 2nd example, since nothing was broken further because nothing was edited that should not be considered a bug in my opinion.

And for housekeeping, even though the exact instance from the report has been fixed since there is some discussion I have removed the fixed tag to prevent archiving. --Redalert2fan (talk) 10:58, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

First diff: Incorrect. "Lecture Notes in Computer Science" is the name of a book series. It should not be put into the title parameter. The correct book title is "The Semantic Web – ISWC 2014" or maybe a longer version

"The Semantic Web – ISWC 2014: 13th International Semantic Web Conference, Riva del Garda, Italy, October 19-23, 2014. Proceedings, Part I". This is not in the citation as given (that was the point of giving this example) but the bot should be able to figure it out from the doi. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:12, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

A different flavor of "title and work → chapter and title" issue

Status

new bug

Reported by

Jay8g [V•T•E] 06:35, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Replication instructions

This bug was fixed for cases where citations are being converted to {{cite book}}, but apparently not when it already uses {{cite book}}. The bot is changing the parameters from title and work to chapter and work, instead of chapter and title, leaving the existing error from using work in cite book and adding a new error for not having a title set.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Bot caused an ISBN/Date incompatibility error

Prior to 2025-09-26 the article "Paracelsus" had a "cite book" reference that had parameters "|orig-year=1894" and "|publication-date=1976", but no "|date=" parameter.

On 2025-09-26 07:25 UTC Citation bot modified "|orig-year=1894" to "|year=1894". This caused an ISBN/Date incompatibility error. It should have modified the "|publication-date=1976" parameter.  ~2025-33904-40 (talk) 16:40, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Diff. The second citation. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:47, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Unsure if error

Status

new bug

Reported by

Abductive (reasoning) 03:51, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Bot treated nearly identical citations to CABI Digital Library in the same article, Hakea, differently. For one, it removed information, but added the same sort of information to another. It left one as cite web but changed one to cite journal.

What should happen

Should be consistent

Relevant diffs/links

diff

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Could be API interaction or the order the bot executed the code due to the citations not being exactly identical that gives the different result.Redalert2fan (talk) 22:50, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Fake issue number and useless identifier numbers

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 00:33, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

What happens

Adds an issue number that was never given in the original publication and identifiers that do not provide any reader-usable information beyond the metadata of the publication already in the reference (WP:ELNO #1)

What should happen

Not that

Relevant diffs/links

Special:Diff/1326425964

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

As I said on my talk page, I'd be interested to see a consensus somewhere that says that these identifiers shouldn't be included since they can be helpful in cases of linkrot, and there is really no downside to including them. Note that WP:ELNO does not apply to references, and #1 does not say what you seem to be claiming it says. Jay8g [V•T•E] 22:43, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

We can distinguish ids as (1) providing a copy of the reference itself, like most dois and some bibcodes, (2) providing a review or abstract of the reference, like MR and zbl, (3) providing nothing beyond the same metadata that is already in the reference, like the ones added in this report. There have been many past discussions on the uselessness of type (3) ids. They do not help readers in cases of linkrot because they provide no different links than the ones here. They do not help readers at all. They merely annoy readers by sending them to a web page that doesn't help them read the reference, and by making it harder for them to find a link that actually goes to the reference. There have been many past discussions on this issue. See e.g. User talk:Citation bot/Archive 41#Useless bibcodes redux and User talk:Citation bot/Archive 42#Bad pmid. But more to the point, see WP:BRD: when your bad edit was reverted, the onus was on you to establish a consensus for the change, rather than just repeating your bot edit to ram it through without consensus. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:26, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

Discussion started at Wikipedia_talk:Citing_sources#Does_WP:CITEVAR_prohibit_adding_metadata_to_citations?. Jay8g [V•T•E] 23:52, 9 December 2025 (UTC)

Don't add title when chapter and encyclopedia are already set (cite encyclopedia)

Status

new bug

Reported by

Jay8g [V•T•E] 04:01, 17 December 2025 (UTC)

What happens

-- it's pretty much always going to be redundant to one or the other of those parameters

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Bogus series

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 19:03, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

What happens

Adds |series= that is not actually a book series, to a reference to a translation of a book. The added text is actually the original untranslated book title and the name of the language it has been translated into.

Relevant diffs/links

Special:Diff/1334297429

Replication instructions

To replicate, be User:Abductive and as usual fail to perform any oversight over the bad edits of the bot.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Can we please get the bot to stop adding book series and series volume numbers in general, unless they are used consistently among the citations on a particular page and obviously desired by the human editors there? Most of the time writing the book series adds significant clutter without adding reader-relevant value (it's a piece of trivia which is largely irrelevant and does not help the reader locate the book, except in relatively rare examples). –jacobolus (t) 20:08, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

Books series and volume should be added when the bot can figure them out. The LNCS volume for instance, is absolutely relevant. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:12, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

Gradual half-conversion of reference from conference version to Frankenstein half-conference half-journal version

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 18:14, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

What happens

In 2020 Citation bot added a journal-version doi to a reference to a conference paper Special:Diff/954417644. Now today it is taking that incorrect doi as license to add more journal-version metadata to the reference (Special:Diff/1335696299) despite the contribution= and title= and year= still being the conference version and the journal= from the journal version still not being included.

What should happen

The bot should notice the contribution= and title= mismatch and leave cleaning up its past mess to humans. The actual preferred outcome in this particular case would be to cite the journal version (and to remove the bogus arxiv bibcode) but Citation bot is not smart enough to distinguish this from cases where the conference version is intended. Also User:Abductive should have noticed the bad edit credited to them and not made it, again.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Not that the edits are individually noticeable as bad, but the whole point of the exercise here is to catch the bot's mistakes—and fix them to make a better bot. Humans should not have to clean up the bot's mess, nor a human's mess if the bot can do it. Abductive (reasoning) 21:13, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

You trigger the bot, you're responsible to check its edits. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:18, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Adds book review metadata to citation to book

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 23:38, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

What happens

Special:Diff/1335741000

What should happen

Not that. The added metadata is for a book review, not for the book being cited. This sort of thing has been reported and reported as fixed long ago. Why is it still happening? This is a severe enough regression that I am seriously considering blocking the bot. And what do you know: Suggested by User:Abductive, but not checked by them. What a surprise.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

The question then becomes: Was it actually fixed last time and did something change causing it to return? Is this a slightly different issue than what was fixed before? Or did the maintainer think they fixed it but apparently they did not? (these are just some thoughts from me). Don't want to pressure you with too much of a search, but if you happen to know the previous report that you are referring to it can be useful for reference. Unfortunately the historical descriptiveness of GitHub pull requests for citation bot is rather lacking, so what the "fix" might have been previously will also be a bit of a search if this is a returning issue. Redalert2fan (talk) 00:26, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

See User talk:Citation bot/Archive 1 § Bot replaces book reference by journal's book review, User talk:Citation bot/Archive 23 § Book vs book review, User talk:Citation bot/Archive 24 § Bot mangles book citation in today's DYK by merging in metadata from journal review of book, and User talk:Citation bot/Archive 18 § Books and their reviews for four different supposedly-fixed instances of the same sort of problem. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:45, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

It could be very well that those instances were indeed fixed, looking at it it seems to be a rare bug indeed since the last report was from you in 2020, although ofcourse that doesn't discount the possibility that it hasn't been happening without anyone noticing. Looking on Github there is indeed code that tries to catch this specific issue, and from the archives it seems to have been made more restrictive over time.

It works uses a scoring system based on the presence of various typical book (and review) citation parameters. If the score is 3 or higher it will think it is a book review.

Investigating this one: The bot correctly detected that the original citation was not a book review using the scoring system, it got a score of 2, therefore it correctly then tried to expand the data for the normal book using the API. But the API incorrectly gave it the data from the book review! After it got that incorrect data the scoring system now gave it a score of 0 and because of that proceeded to add the data.

The question is why did the scoring system give it an even lower score even though the proposed output has more paramters that are consistent with a review? That is the part that needs to be looked in to and fixed. Redalert2fan (talk) 14:02, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

Going deeper, it seems like that the code gives a negative 2 score to journal, which is a more likely book review item even though we want to block scores above 3. And it gives positive scores to all items that are present in books. There is probably something wrong with the scoring system or the logic is switched around. A citebook with just an ISBN will get +5 but that is not a book review for sure. Currently a citebook with a journal (which is not even allowed) would end up with a score of 1. Redalert2fan (talk) 15:24, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

Bug tracked at: https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/issues/5420 Redalert2fan (talk) 11:26, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

Added url= should be contribution-url=

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 21:16, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

What happens

In Special:Diff/1335896006, the added url is for a paper in an edited volume. But it is added as url= (causing it to be linked to the title of the volume), when it should have been added as contribution-url= (linked to the title of the paper). Secondarily, in this particular case, it would have been better to use hdl=, as the handle goes to the same place as the url.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Removes mathematics formatting from reference title

Status

new bug

Reported by

—David Eppstein (talk) 21:37, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

What happens

In Special:Diff/1335903462 it changed a title from "The length of an <math>s</math>-increasing sequence of <math>r</math>-tuples" (with LaTeX-mathematics formatting) to "The length of an ''s'' -increasing sequence of ''r'' -tuples" (with bare-html italics for the mathematics, not even {{math}}).

What should happen

Not that. In this case the result is merely bad and ugly formatting, but for some other titles the use of LaTeX mathematics in the title is an absolute necessity; they cannot be formatted correctly in any other way. For example: Benjamin, Arthur T.; Orrison, M. E. (2002), "Two quick combinatorial proofs of $\textstyle \sum k^{3}={n+1 \choose 2}^{2}$" (PDF), College Mathematics Journal, 33 (5): 406–408, doi:10.2307/1559017, JSTOR 1559017

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

There is code for handling "normal" math which may change current titles. There is special code that actually enforces correct "LaTeX" formatting when adding new titles, I added that some time ago. That new code is explicitly not allowed to edit current LaTeX formatted math even if the current form is wrong, it will throw a warning to the user to check the formatting even though it can succesfully fix it. Running this citation by itself does not give any math related warnings.

The issue here is that the bot fetches data (using the crossref API) which gives the title as "The length of an ''s'' -increasing sequence of ''r'' -tuples" and overwrites the current title - you can verify it if you empty the title parameter and run the bot, it adds the incorrect version. So the bot does not see that the title is similair enough for it to not change it, it thinks the original title and the one it is trying to add are completely different and picks the new one. So there was actualy no math "handling" done on this citation. The title recognition logic needs to be updated.

If the bot thinks the current title and the fetched title are completely different, there is a high likelihood of one or both being problematic in a way that the bot cannot resolve. It should refuse to edit and raise an alert for human attention. It should certainly not guess that it is right and whoever put that title there in the first place was somehow mistaken in doing so. This is especially true for titles containing mathematics formatting for which it is very likely that the online metadata formats the mathematics badly and that the Wikipedia editor who added the citation has corrected the formatting already. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:08, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

I actually think for this instance it does not need to give a warning, it should just not have made the edit at all. Correction for this bug is to not overwrite titles using <math>.

And to re-iterate this is not a function of handling of math formatting, the bot can recognise actually poorly formatted mathml mathematics and convert it to correct LaTeX. It does this when adding new titles (no title present), and it warns users for existing poor formatting that should be converted. Titles received from API using incorrect mathml will be recognised so if a user already corrected them to LaTex they will already not be overwritten. Redalert2fan (talk) 22:46, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

Further investigation: diff When the citation already contains the journal it keeps the title. Redalert2fan (talk) 23:14, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

issue and volume can't both be #163

Status

new bug

Reported by

Abductive (reasoning) 22:04, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

What happens

Bot added issue=163 where there was already volume=163 to History of the metre

Relevant diffs/links

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_the_metre&diff=next&oldid=1329009885

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

• This is for an 1873 article in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. I believe that the volume is the year, and note that the bot did not add the year. I also note that the bot did not make this "correction" when it edited History of the metre in December, and there were no intervening edits. Abductive (reasoning) 22:04, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

Antibiotics and Chemotherapy is a journal, not a book series

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:45, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

What happens

What should happen

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Was added to specifically be a series back in 2019, see User_talk:Citation_bot/Archive_19#Better_series_handling:_Antibiotics_and_Chemotherapy. Not sure if that was your intention back then but the pull request that was implemented added Antibiotics and Chemotherapy to JOURNAL_IS_BOOK_SERIES forcing it to be a book series. I can remove it from there and it should be processed a a journal again. Let me know how to proceed. Redalert2fan (talk) 17:44, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

@Redalert2fan: I see.... the difference is that A&C with the DOI 10.1159/... is a book series from Karger, while A&C with the DOI 10.24411/... or 10.37489/... is the Russian journal. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:20, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

Is one version a lot more common than the other? In the current configuration the bot doesn't have code to handle this. Redalert2fan (talk) 09:38, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

The series (10.1159/.) is much more commonly encountered. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:18, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll have to think about implementing some special code to handle this one then Redalert2fan (talk) 21:59, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

bot creates malformed |vauthors= parameter

Status

new bug

Reported by

Trappist the monk (talk) 14:24, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

What happens

bot duplicated journal name in |vauthors=. Apparently The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health names itself as author for editorials. I'm not sure that it is necessary to name the journal as author in citations when we already name the journal in the required |journal= parameter. If it is deemed to be necessary and if the bot is going to populate |vauthors= with the journal name, the rules for |vauthors= must be obeyed. If it must be, then for this example, the author-name must be written: |vauthor=((The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health)) so that cs1|2 does not emit a Vancouver style error message.

Relevant diffs/links

diff

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Adds ORCID URL with invalid character, but even without that character, it seems like a useless URL

Status

new bug

Reported by

  — Chris Capoccia 💬 21:48, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

What happens

completing doi:10.1257/aer.20180338 adds ORCID URL for John Van Reenen author page, but appended with an illegal character. While he is one of the authors, the page does not include anything about the title at all, so the whole URL is useless and should not be added.

Relevant diffs/links

diff

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Broken bepress URL

Status

Resolved

. --Redalert2fan (talk) 19:57, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Reported by

  — Chris Capoccia 💬 23:30, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

What happens

expanding doi:10.1542/peds.2007-2361 adds broken URL instead of adding |doi-access=free

Relevant diffs/links

diff

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Broken URL no longer added. No |doi-access=free is added because

Unpaywall: reports is_oa: false, oa_status: closed

PubMed Central: no PMC ID associated — no free full text there

AAP Pediatrics site: returns 403 to automated requests, so the bot can't verify

DOI prefix rules: 10.1542/ or 10.1542/peds is not in DOI_FREE_PREFIX — no blanket rule marks Pediatrics articles as free (That is citation bots own list).

--Redalert2fan (talk) 02:26, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

If there is a range here that should be marked as free let me know - can even be on condition with before/after year XXXX or after X amount of months etc. --Redalert2fan (talk) 02:29, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Bepress and Pediatrics are not open access publishers/journals in general.

There is Pediatrics Open Science that you could mark as free (10.1542/pedsos) if you wanted. But that's a different journal. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:42, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

I can add that one. Redalert2fan (talk) 19:56, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/pull/5687 Redalert2fan (talk) 20:02, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

Expanding DOI adds URL for unrelated thesis

Status

new bug

Reported by

  — Chris Capoccia 💬 14:05, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

What happens

expansion of doi:10.1109/CVPR.2016.90 adds URL for unrelated thesis

Relevant diffs/links

diff

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Spurious issue for Annual Reviews...

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:47, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

What happens

What should happen

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Possibly related to the recent issues fix. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:47, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

I don't think its related to that, since that fix only strips stuff or moves when it matches the exact combination of the text + year. --Redalert2fan (talk) 08:27, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

cookieAbsent

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:05, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

What should happen

,

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Basically, TNT the whole citation, keep the doi, and expand. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:05, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

This affects ~450 articles. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:16, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Patch: PR 5606. This will only prevent citation bot from introducing errors. implementing your request will need more work Redalert2fan (talk) 14:36, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

Incorrectly shortens DOI value

Status

new bug

Reported by

GoingBatty (talk) 16:52, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

What happens

On Community health centers in the United States, the bot incorrectly shortens DOI value in reference #75

What should happen

correct DOI value or do nothing

Replication instructions

Go to Community health centers in the United States, click "Edit source" and then scroll to the bottom and click the "Citations" button.

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

@GoingBatty: Are you sure? It appears that ref #75 (permalink) was added to the article by Editor Juerta at this edit. That ref is obviously broken (extraneous tail text). In the time between Editor Juerta's edit and your recent edit (as I write this, the current revision), Citation bot did not edit the article. Do you have a diff to support your claim?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:03, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: I did not save the edit, as I didn't want to break the article. But I just made this edit, which I promptly reverted. GoingBatty (talk) 18:49, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

Caps: de La Plata

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:41, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

What should happen

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Mixing review with book

Status

new bug

Reported by

Kanguole 15:57, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

What happens

mangles a citation of a book by mixing in a review of the book

Relevant diffs/links

(This is from May of last year, but I only noticed when it caused a confused CitationCleanerBot to do further damage.)

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Caps: И → и

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:32, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

What should happen

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Unless it's the last character. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:32, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

CAPS: AAAI/ACM

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:06, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

What should happen

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Caps: у

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:00, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

What should happen

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

Unless it's the last character. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:00, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Bot mangles citations of Canadian federal statutes, deleting key information

Bot crams Canadian federal statutes into a cite template that is not designed for statutes. By doing so, it eliminates the key elements of statute cites: jurisdiction, volume, year, and chapter. Also, once a citation style is established on an article, it should not be changed to meet an individual's preference; bot ignores that guideline. Please see: WP:CITEVAR; MOS:LAW (Canada section); Citation of Canadian legislation. Please see also this diff: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marriage_in_Canada&diff=prev&oldid=1363657212 for an example of bot’s mangling of cites.

As well, bot leaves an inaccurate error message. If the cite it’s mangling is not a template, but contains a formatted url, it says it fixed a bare url. That’s a lie, suggesting that editors who don’t use templates for cites (which is not required) is leaving bare urls around. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 18:45, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Bad handling of duplicated chapter/title title

Status

new bug

Reported by

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:21, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

What happens

What should happen

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

deletes |url= but failed to delete associated |url-access=

Status

new bug

Reported by

Trappist the monk (talk) 15:12, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

What happens

bot deleted |url= but failed to delete the associated |url-access=

What should happen

when deleting |url= bot must also ensure that an associated |url-access= is also deleted.

Relevant diffs/links

diff

We can't proceed until

Feedback from maintainers

To be clear here, the issue is that **I** removed |url= to TNT the citation, but the bot failed to remove |url-access= as part of the cleanup I expected it to do. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:55, 29 July 2026 (UTC)