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Bot's change of reference ISBN is based on a mistake
I own the paperback edition of the book Extraordinary Circumstances: The Seven Days Battles by Brian K. Burton Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011, and I copied the publication information, including the ISBN from the publication page of the book. This is verified by http://www.worldcat.org/title/extraordinary-circumstances-the-seven-days-battles/oclc/696806042?referer=br&ht=edition. The bot picked up a mistaken entry for this book. It is shown on WorldCat as Extraordinary circumstances :the Seven Days Author: Barbara K Burton Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2001. Edition/Format: Print book: Document Computer File: English. ISBN 9780253108449. This is shown at http://www.worldcat.org/title/extraordinary-circumstances-the-seven-days-battles/oclc/816061180?referer=di&ht=edition. Barbara K. Burton is an author but she did not write Extraordinary Circumstances. Note the same press and year of publication for the hardcover version by Brian K. Burton as for the mistaken version by Barbara K. Burton. This entry, along with its additional and mistaken ISBN, is in error and must be the one the AWB picked up. Donner60 (talk) 04:56, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
- Donner60 My name is Bgwhite, not bgwhitebot, therefore a bot did not edit the page. A bot must have "bot" in the name. AWB was used, but I generally use AWB to manually edit things, just like I did with this page. It's a pet peeve of mine that people see AWB and think mindless drone. AWB did not pick up the error, CheckWiki did because the ISBN you are using is impossible to have.
- The ISBN that is in the article is wrong. Click on it... ISBN 978-0-253-22777-0 Parameter error in {{ISBN}}: checksum. You will see an error. The ISBN is given so a person can find the book. If the ISBN is in error, they cannot find it. Goto the Worldcat links you gave and you will notice you copied the ISBN wrong.
- If you have kept the {{cite}} template and put in your ISBN number, you would have gotten red text in the reference section telling you it was wrong. Among the many advantages of the {{cite}} template is it checks for many errors, it's in a format that machines understand (Google's, Wikidata and others) and people can enter the article's refs into their reference management software. An article on the latest K-pop group I could care less about cite templates. An article on history or science is more "important". Bgwhite (talk) 06:28, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
- Bgwhite Sorry about my unfamiliarity with AWB and the CheckWiki in particular. In addition to that, I see that my description of the process was careless, although it was well-intended as I did not want to make an unfair assumption about what I thought was an error. (It still appears to me that that the Barbara K. Burton citation and connected ISBN is an error, as well, but that is beside the point in view of my error.) Nonetheless, I apologize for not being more thoughtful, specific and precise. I should know better that persons are in control of bots and many "automated" tools actually require some action and discretion by humans. You have identified my copy error, noting that WorldCat has 22277 rather than the 22777 which I typed. I am sorry for that mistake and for the additional aggravation, time and work that you needed to put into this to point it out to me. I am glad to get your advice and reminder, however, and I will make a better effort to remember to get these numbers right in the future. I have made quite a few citations over the years and I trust I have not made similar mistakes, or at least that if I did, they were few and were promptly corrected. I certainly agree with you on the obvious importance of getting them right, in more serious articles in particular. I am not sure why I came across this article that had no citations at all and citation needed tags on most of the sentences. I decided I had enough information available to take care of that and am sorry to have caused some trouble in doing so. Donner60 (talk) 07:07, 7 November 2015 (UTC)