CiteFix: Difference between revisions

**Manual on MediaWiki Tools**
CiteFix; Release status: beta
Author(s)	Jayprakash, Gopavasanth, Sarthak
License	MIT
Download	No link
Issues:	Open tasks · Report a bug

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Revision as of 00:10, 25 July 2026

CiteFix is a MediaWiki gadget and server-side tool that helps Wikipedia editors identify and repair common citation errors in articles. It analyses the current article's wikitext, applies applicable fixes, and opens the edit page with the corrected wikitext preloaded alongside a live diff, allowing editors to review every change before deciding whether to publish or discard it. CiteFix never publishes edits automatically. The editor is always in control. The tool currently focuses on repairing common citation issues such as:

The tool currently focuses on repairing common citation issues, including:

Additional citation error types will be supported as the tool evolves.

Tool: https://citefix.wmcloud.org/
Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/view/8897/

Features

Fixes malformed or invalid URLs in CS1 citation templates ({{Cite web }}, {{Cite news }}, {{Cite journal }}, etc.)
Restores broken named references (<ref name="x"/> with no matching definition) by searching revision history and sibling articles
Inserts {{Reflist }} or {{Notelist }} when references are present but no reference list exists
Deduplicates repeated reference definitions
Adds a CiteFix button to the article tab bar alongside Read, Edit, and View history
Automatically opens the "Show changes" diff view for editor review
Auto-fills the edit summary with Fixed citation errors using CiteFix

How it works

The editor clicks the CiteFix button on any Wikipedia article.
The gadget sends the article title to the CiteFix backend API hosted on Wikimedia Cloud Services.
The backend fetches the article's latest wikitext via the MediaWiki Action API, applies all relevant citation fixes in a single pass, and returns the corrected wikitext.
The gadget redirects the editor to the article's edit page, injects the corrected wikitext into the editor, and automatically clicks "Show changes".
The editor reviews the proposed diff and chooses to publish, modify, or discard the changes.

Supported fix categories

Category	Description
`cs1`	Removes or corrects malformed URLs in CS1 citation template parameters (`url=`, `archive-url=`)
`broken_ref`	Restores self-closing `<ref name="…"/>` tags that have no matching definition, by searching page history and related articles
`missing_reflist`	Inserts {{Reflist }} or {{Notelist }} when the article uses references but has no reference list
`duplicate_ref`	Collapses duplicate `<ref>` definitions with the same name into a single definition with self-closing reuses

Installation

As a personal userscript

Add the following line to your Special:MyPage/common.js:

mw.loader.load('//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Gopavasanth/UserScripts/Citefix.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');

Or copy the full script from the repository directly into your common.js.

As a wiki gadget (sysops)

Copy the userscript into MediaWiki:Gadget-CiteFix.js.
Add the following to MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition:

* CiteFix[ResourceLoader|default=false]|CiteFix.js

API

The CiteFix backend exposes a public REST API hosted at https://citefix.wmcloud.org/api.

Fix endpoint

POST /api/fix

Request body:

{
  "language": "en",
  "category": ["cs1", "broken_ref", "missing_reflist", "duplicate_ref"],
  "page": "Article title"
}

Response:

{
  "id": "abc123",
  "no_changes": false
}

Retrieve corrected wikitext

POST /api/newcontent/{id}