 | Editors who activate this bot should carefully check the results to make sure that they are as expected. While the bot does the best it can, it cannot anticipate theexisting misuse of template parameters or anticipate bad/incompletemetadata fromcitation databases. See alsoOABot, which is better at finding free/open access versions of citations. |
 | Thisuser account is abot operated bySmith609 (talk). It is used to make repetitiveautomated orsemi-automated edits that would be extremely tedious to do manually, in accordance with thebot policy. The bot is approved and currently active – the relevantrequest for approval can be seenhere. Administrators: if this bot is malfunctioning or causing harm, pleaseblock it. |
 | Thisbot runs onWikimedia Toolforge. Administrators: If this bot needs to be blocked due to a malfunction, please remember to disable autoblocks so that other Toolforge bots are not affected. |
 |  |  |  |
| Activate | Guide | Bugs/Features | Emergency shutoff |
| Activate the bot on a specific page or all articles in a category. | How do you get the best results? Want an activation link on every page you edit? Consult the guide! | Something wrong? Report it! Have an idea? Suggest it! Source code available atGitHub. | Admins: Followinstructions. Non-admins: Report toWP:ANI. |
This bot was originally designed to adddigital object identifiers (DOIs) to references; it now does much more, adding other identifiers (PMIDs, ISBNs), links to open access repositories, and fixing common formatting errors.
The bot obtains citation data from a range of sources, includingGoogle Books,Google Books API Family,CrossRef,AdsAbs,arXiv,oaDOI and PubMed. Because scraping data from web pages is unreliable and resource-intensive, these databases are the main source of data; unfortunately, the bot is unable to tell when these databases contain errors or incomplete information. Any such error or omission should be reported directly to the data repository maintainer. The bot also corrects citations to matchWP:CITALICSRFC and similar. Note that a503 error means that the bot is overloaded and you should try again later – wait at least an hour.
Open source links are from mostlyoaDOI.
A stable version of the bot is always available athttps://citations.toolforge.org/
Time commitments preclude regular updates; maintenance is attempted every few months. The source code can be found athttps://github.com/ms609/citation-bot.
The bot edit summaries try to strike a balance between providing too little information to be useful and so much information as to exceed the line limits and to just duplicate the edit content itself. Sometimes the edit summary will include items that did not occur in the final edit because multiple actions cancelled each other out. Also, if a URL is removed, then the edit summary might say that other things (such as access-date) were removed because there was no URL, even though there was originally a URL: this is because the bot works in phases.
{{bots|deny=Citation bot}}|, such as{{cite journal <!-- Citation bot bypass--> |last=Smith |first=John |year=2018 |...}}|last=/|first=, or a wrong|doi=) to a citation), put a comment in place of the appropriate parameter such as|doi = <!-- Citation bot adds wrong DOI-->or
|volume=7A <!-- volume A7 is a database mistake -->
Although the content of the comment is not relevant to the Citation Bot, it is best to include some text within the comment so that human editors understand why there is a comment. Also, it makes it clear why, such if the comment was "Citation bot grabs invalid issue number from pubmed", then a human might know that they too should not believe pubmed. Lastly, random empty comments are prone to being deleted by human editors as "extraneous".
It may be possible to fix the underlying problem if youreport the error – but there are a few, rare instances (such as false positives and editor preference) where it is impossible to implement an automatic fix.
If the bot is adding seemingly-unrelated data to a citation, it is probably receiving a false positive from the citation databases it consults. Unfortunately, there's no way for the bot to know this, so there are two ways of avoiding it:
When checking results, be sure that the bot has pulled metadata from the original work, and not from a review of the original work.
The bot replaces hyphens withen dash in page number ranges. On rare occasions when a hyphen is right and an en dash is wrong (hyphen in the page number itself, often because the page number includes the chapter too), manually use the{{hyphen}} template instead of thedash/hyphen character. An alternative is to use the template's|at= parameter.
The bot draws all parameters specified inModule:Citation/CS1/Whitelist with the format "['parameter_name'] = true", and treats these as valid spellings. The bot maintains its own copy athttps://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/blob/master/constants/parameters.php
There have been a number of requests for the bot to be adapted to foreign-language wikipedias. When time permits, I will be happy to work towards this. For me to adapt the bot for a foreign wiki I first need:
If you have both of these available, pleaselet me know and I will set to work on the necessary coding.
The Gadget method does not require a bot login, so users can do that without any work on our end.
Automatic or manually Assisted: Automatic
Programming language(s): PHP
Function summary: Maintains and expands citations; ensures standards are complied to.
Edit period(s): Can run in a continuous mode that automatically revisits articles, but currently used on specific articles wheneverrequested by a user.
Function details:
| Wikitext | userbox | where used | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
{{User wikipedia/Citation bot}} |
| linked pages |
 | The Original Barnstar |
| Thank you, you have been very helpful to me as a new user and contributor.Tonythetiger89 (talk) 16:29, 15 August 2013 (UTC) |
This kitten is
Fixed
Vivian
Kashment (talk) 20:51, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 05:13, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 | The Citation Barnstar |
| For all of your citation fixes!Quinton Feldberg (talk) 05:49, 24 August 2017 (UTC) |
 | The Editor's Barnstar |
| Amazing, Im out of words!It's Indeed very helpfulDadhush (talk) 12:52, 16 November 2018 (UTC) |
| The Editor's Barnstar |
| Good job. Keep it up man !!!Taal Saptak (talk) 10:09, 7 July 2018 (UTC) |
 | That's really greatJackwilliam2 (talk) 12:20, 3 December 2018 (UTC) |
 | The Technical Barnstar |
| Thank you for your dedication that eases my workload!It's gonna be awesome!✎Talk♬ 13:36, 5 January 2019 (UTC) |
| The Original Barnstar |
| Thank youAckee123 (talk) 11:38, 30 August 2019 (UTC) |
 | Good job!Azilmark89 (talk) 12:53, 22 August 2019 (UTC) |
| The Citation Barnstar |
| Hey, I was just there suffering in cite date. Any way thanks CBOT.F5pillar (talk) 19:18, 21 January 2020 (UTC) |
| The Citation Barnstar |
| This Bot is very useful.Swapout (talk) 10:44, 27 October 2020 (UTC) |
 | Why not send a cup!IWikepidsacusk (talk) 14:17, 4 December 2020 (UTC) |
Penguinmlle has given youmicrochips! Microchips promoteWikiLove (📖💞) and hopefully this one has made your day more efficient. It is the food best preferred bybots. 🤖 Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else microchips, whether it be someone you have hadrobot wars with in the past or a good friend.
Spread the goodness of microchips by adding {{subst:Microchips for you}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message!
| The Original Barnstar |
| thank botMohamed Taqi (talk) 11:44, 25 May 2021 (UTC) |
| 편집자 반스타 |
| Thank you for your detail editing. May the Lord bless you.칼빈500 (talk) 14:04, 18 September 2021 (UTC) |
| The Original Barnstar |
| Awesome!DIACHRONY (talk) 14:30, 16 November 2021 (UTC) |
| The Editor's Barnstar |
| Thank you for your edit onPokémon Go, where you added the title of "Kalos Celebration Event - Pokémon Go" by Serebii, which I pasted the URL to.Kurisumasen (talk) 22:07, 7 December 2021 (UTC) |
| The Citation Barnstar |
| Thank you, bot. We will always remember your citations ;) ImurmateI'ma editor2022 (talk) 03:26, 9 January 2022 (UTC) |
A goat friend for a bot, why not?
Cobrafang (talk) 13:25, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
| The Original Barnstar |
| thank bot 😁️Einahr11 (talk) 19:22, 12 August 2022 (UTC) |
 | The Brilliant Idea Barnstar |
| This bot is great!Andre🚐 02:47, 8 August 2022 (UTC) |
| The Technical Barnstar |
| thanks chadVon bismarck (talk) 18:55, 6 February 2023 (UTC) |
 | The Anti-Vandalism Barnstar |
| Thanks for keeping Wikipedia a fairly accurate source of information!PJFootball (talk) 19:26, 6 July 2024 (UTC) |
 | Yum!Arhan D (talk) 23:15, 22 February 2024 (UTC) |
| The Original Barnstar |
| Thank you for editing a lot. I have seen a lot of your edits.I-ready Fan (talk) 22:04, 29 January 2024 (UTC) |
| The Citation Barnstar for Timeline of Salem, MA ..always amazing work.. THANKS AGAIN.. |
| Add: date, title. Changed bare reference to CS1/2....For all of your citation fixes on the Timeline of Salem, MA ..always amazing work.. THANKS AGAIN..3rd of October 2024.!(UTC) |
 | The Resilient Barnstar |
| Good robot 3rd of October 2024(UTC) |
| The Resilient Barnstar |
| Good robotSusbush (talk) 15:21, 27 September 2024 (UTC) |
Congratulations, wonderful robot! I see you have helped us improve article citations over 5 million times!! That's a very impressive milestone, IMHO, and we are so glad to help your help. Bravo you, and keep up the good work. Best,jengod (talk) 23:53, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
Pygos (talk) 03:21, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
 | Bot Operator's Barnstar | |
| The Citation bot is a Tremendous Bot, keep up the amazing work on editing. |
 | ReallyGoodBotAward(R) |
| w/ loveHym3242 (talk) 17:09, 28 November 2024 (UTC) |
i used it and to be honest, its cool!
Nail123Real (talk) 16:57, 29 December 2024 (UTC)
 | To the best bot on Wikipedia!Plasticwonder (talk) 02:26, 19 April 2025 (UTC) |
Starlet147 has given youmicrochips! Microchips promoteWikiLove (📖💞) and hopefully this one has made your day more efficient. It is the food best preferred bybots. 🤖 Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else microchips, whether it be someone you have hadrobot wars with in the past or a good friend.
Spread the goodness of microchips by adding {{subst:Microchips for you}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message!
Starry~~(Starlet147) 22:44, 4 November 2025 (UTC)
