MediaWiki talk:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js

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ToDo List

• Better handling of {{Uncategorized}} template (TFCforever), what exactly? →probably he means the subject under #Categorizing uncategorized content with Cat-a-lot
• Keyboard support (Jean-Fred)
• Compatibility with gallery details gadget (User:Docu)
• Copying images from categories added through templates (User:Docu) (You want to copy images or categories? -- Rillke^(q?)) (Images) Works now  Done --  Docu  at 06:03, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
• Remove category from search results (User:Docu) (Which category? Or "Category not found?" -- Rillke^(q?)) A category to be added in the entry box --  Docu  at 06:03, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
• Ability to move categories too (User:Timeshifter). Seems  Done - -  Docu  at 06:03, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Comments

Categorizing uncategorized content with Cat-a-lot

Hello, is somebody able to change the script so it also allows to categorize uncategorized content? That would be really helpful! --WikipediaMaster (talk) 18:54, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes e.g. Search results --Kolossos (talk) 22:27, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Is it possible to remove by copy or move to a category like by hotcat [1]. Thx, great tool, Conny (talk) 19:37, 8 April 2009 (UTC).

As previous comments, it would be very helpful to include in this very good script the categories handling. --Djiboun (talk) 19:42, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Greetings to you hard working guys. This problem has now come up in a very big way. The geograph project is in the process of uploading 1.5 million files, most of them tagged . These are then placed in pseudo-categories based on the gridref parameter. The files are easily displayed by the normal means- the cat-a-lot button operates, cat-a-lot allows you to select all, and attempts to move them- then thows the error message that they have not been copy/moved due to the source category being unfound. If you cannot provide a fix- could you gives us a few pointers to where we need to look in the code so someone could write a fork. If the code would slow the performance of the tool, could I suggest that a simple override N/Y button could be incorporated int the UI so those of us who are trying to tackle the geograph surge could opt for some performance rather than none.

If there is a work around could someone spell it out for me and others.--ClemRutter (talk) 14:50, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Easy. Do you want {{Uncategorized-Geograph}} removed as well? --DieBuche (talk) 19:05, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I think retaining the {{Uncategorized-Geograph}} template would be beneficial, as it allows tracking of the files that haven't been properly checked (so bots can find them for other categorisation runs). Dropping the gridref= parameter would be helpful, as it sorts out the issue with Special:WantedCategories being overwhelmed. Commons:Bots/Requests/NilfaBot is of relevance here, I'd say this is the sort of edit to aim for. (It suggests a slight fork from the main Cat-a-Lot project to me). (On second thoughts that's a bad idea - a single purpose fork doing that is one thing, but in general it could lead to the grid ref info being lost without being utilised effectively.--Nilfanion (talk) 21:59, 25 February 2011 (UTC))

@ClemRutter if you do massive script runs with this, please so do on a bot account.--Nilfanion (talk) 22:01, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

How about a fork where: When you click "add", the uncat template is left untouched; when you do "move", the gridref= is dropped and the cat added.--DieBuche (talk) 11:11, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

That would work, after all using the gridref to put it into a location cat is "moving" the category from the temp location cat to a real one. Cat-a-Lot would be a more time-effective solution for categories with a few pics like this one than what I have been doing with the ones with 200+ images.--Nilfanion (talk) 01:20, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Apologies for dropping out of the conversation- I forgot to check the watch button! @Nilfanion- sure I'll check it out. --ClemRutter (talk) 01:08, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I think we still have a problem, I've just tried to move 4 images from Category:Images from the Geograph British Isles project needing categories in grid TQ2878 to a more meaningful category and got "Done. The following pages were skipped, because the old category could not be found: all the images were listed and none were actually categorised. Jonathan Cardy (talk) 22:57, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

The same for me when I wanted to move some from Category:Media needing categories as of 7 September 2008 --Avron (talk) 19:08, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

See also Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard#Patrolling_Category:Media_needing_categories. --  Docu  at 08:31, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Subcats

I've used Catalot to declutter some of our categories that contain excess images by creating subcategories for various individual churches and pubs in London. But it is still quite fiddly going through 42 images in a category such as Category:St Margaret's, King's Lynn (interior) and removing the Geograph category. It would be really helpful to have a tool that looked at the images in a subcategory, identified the various categories those images were now in and gave you a set of choices. So in a hypothetical example:

St Ethel, Pinner is in the categories Pinner and Churches in Ruislip. There are 42 images in the category of which:

6 are in the category Anglican churches in London, 7 in the category Anglican churches in England and 2 are in the category Anglican churches in the UK

similarly some are in various Saint Ethel categories, a dozen or so are in the category stone built churches in ... a couple have categories for the year the building was built and one even has a category for the architect who designed it. It would be very useful to be able to tag the categories Anglican churches in London, built in London in 1842, Saint Ethel churches in England, and buildings designed by Quinlan Rogers so that they all moved to the category for the church and tag the redundant ones such as Anglican churches in UK for removal. Whilst still of course being able to leave unaltered categories about rood screens and baptismal fonts that would actually apply to some of the 42 images but not the whole category. Another nice touch would be if one were able to drill down and identify the one anomalous image in the category that was also categorised as churches in West Sussex. Jonathan Cardy (talk) 07:31, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Hidden categories and GLAM

Hi everyone,
I am working on the cultural partners list and involved in the GLAM movement. We focus on cooperations with instituational parnters such as galleries, libraries, archives and museums. When looking on large cooperations like that with NARA.
One issue we have noticed as problematic when handling large collections of uncategorised media is using cat-a-lot for hidden categories. Especially for the collections of NARA.
If possible from a technical POV we'd appreciate if cat-a-lot could work for hidden categories. If not possible due to technical issues, human resources or the like feel free to leave a note.
Regards, PETER WEIS TALK 13:00, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Same issue was reported here. --Jarekt (talk) 14:50, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

OK, found the reason. Not an easy fix.

The reason Cat-a-lot cannot move the image to another category from:

[[Category:Category:Media from the National Archives and Records Administration needing categories as of 17 September 2011]]

is that the "source" category is not written in the image description.

Instead, there is:

{{Uncategorized-NARA|year=2011|month=September|day=17}}

Cat-a-lot has no means of determining that it needs to remove the template to remove the category.

As a safety function, if it cannot remove the "source" category, it will not do the edit at all. This also applies for "copying". --Magnus Manske (talk) 14:51, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I understand that one cannot move a file if category is added by a template, but I do not see any reason why copying should not work. Just yesterday, I run again again into this issue (I obviously have short memory since I wrote about it few months ago, last time I run into it). I was trying to categorize some files from user:Dominic's NARA upload by adding temporary by author categories in Template:NARA-Author and then trying to copy the files using Cat-a-lot. Cat-a-lot did not work, so I guess I will have to use AWB bot or some other more complicated means. --Jarekt (talk) 15:16, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I've run into the same problem when trying to put problematic images uploaded as part of the Wiki Loves Monuments campaign into a maintanance category. Since the original category was added by a template it's preventing me from copying them into a second category. Would it be possible to put the "in current category test" after the move/copy selection so that it only affects moves? /Lokal_Profil 14:40, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

This is a big, old and troubling issue to those of us trying to tackle the hundreds of thousands of uncategorised or poorly categorised images from the geograph loads. It is deeply depressing to go through a couple of hundred images, tag the ones that can be move into a particular category and then realise that Cat a Lot will let you spend your time tagging that category, it just won't action those edits. Aside from the harmless change of just allowing Catalot to copy in categories and leave such templates in place; Would it be possible for catalot to check before it lets you tag the images in a category and instead just give you the message "Cat A Lot can't be used on this category as it is in a template"? Better still, why not give Catalot the power to move consenting templates, and then amend the Geograph, NARA and similar uncategorised templates to give Catalot permission to remove them. WereSpielChequers (talk) 08:55, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

See also: MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js#Copying_images_from_categories_added_through_templates --  Docu  at 09:02, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

A simple fix is desperately needed- and the workaround really is not going to encourage mass participation in catting. Is there any mileage - in providing a template hunters switch that causes the selected files templates to be expanded out into a temp file before the determining the cats present- a loss of speed would be acceptable if it allowed us to get the job done?--ClemRutter (talk) 00:11, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Alternatively perhaps we could just a bot to go through and remove the uncategorised geograph template from images that have been categorised using Catalot? Catalot now allows you to add categories using the copy images option even if you can't move them (I think this is a recent change). So it is now possible to use Catalot on the Geograph backlog, but if we start to make progress we will soon find ourselves wasting time because we can't differentiate between images already categorised via Catalot and the uncategorised. WereSpielChequers (talk) 01:06, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I understand that cat-a-lot is working. For the backlog of images that include the Uncategorized-Geograph template but also have categories, I have written a bit of Python to identify them and can remove the template. See User:Fæ/Sandbox2 for an example sub-list of images. If this looks okay, I'd like to let it run through the backlog, it would probably finish with an overnight run. --Fæ (talk) 16:23, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Truncated texts when using cat-a-lot and other oddities

Please, see [2]. Thanks --JMCC1 (talk) 05:12, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

clarifying: just before that post was made, JMCC1 had half a dozen edit summaries from Cat-a-lot saying just rev ??? !!!. Rd232 (talk) 07:42, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think so. this was actually the problem. -- RE rillke questions? 09:00, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I see, "rev" was JMCC1's edit summary reverting those problems. Rd232 (talk) 09:17, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

we had one documented similar "accident" with cat-a-lot on hewiki (as far as i can remember, this single accident screwed up 2 or 3 articles, not just one). was waiting for more data before reporting. it'll help to hear what browser (incl. version) did JMCC1 use when this happened. also, it would help if JMCC1 can try to execute the offending operation again and see if this behavior is consistent or was a fluke. קיפודנחש (talk) 13:01, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

it seems that the last change by cat-a-lot, just before the screwup began is this. note that it seems to be a part of large "move" operation, but for this one file, the target category already exists, and instead of "move" we get a "remove". after that, the fecal missile hits the rotating blades. peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 13:13, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Example (File:Egyptian - Scarab Ring - Walters 542463 - Impression.): 23:45 25 mar 2012 23:48 25 mar 2012 23:48 25 mar 2012 23:50 25 mar 2012 20:35 29 mar 2012 14:32 1 abr 2012 14:36 1 abr 2012 14:37 1 abr 2012 14:48 1 abr 2012 JMCC1 (talk)

it's a nasty bug. tried to look into it a bit, and there are really 3 possibilities: either we get partial page when reading, or we truncate it wrongly when trying to do the replacement, or maybe the problem is when writing the page back to the server. the first and last hint to a bug in the media-wiki code, while the second implies the problem is in cat-a-lot. for now i go with "bug in cat-a-lot", and my hunch is JS/browser interaction. you still did not answer my question regarding browser and version you used when these mishaps occured. peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 21:54, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. My browser: Firefox 11.0 --JMCC1 (talk)

(I've reinstalled Firefox 11.0) Possibly solved. Thank you. --JMCC1 (talk) 11:00, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Very good, except: [3] [4] [5] ... etc.

yes - i ran some inquiries on hewiki, and the person that experiencd the problem was using chrome, so i doubt it can be blamed on the browser. i hope to get some downtime and learn how to recreate the problem - i assume that once i can reliably reproduce it, it should be relatively simple dbggng. peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 18:23, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

The edittoken should be sent last. Perhaps this would solve such truncates. token: this.edittoken, I have the feeling that the POST-message gets lost in parts sometimes. -- RE rillke questions? 18:23, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

i am not aware of any constraints on the order of parameters - not even when using "get", and definitely not when using "post". in theory, we pass to $.ajax an object, and the order is not even well defined (even though practically, all javascript implementations that i know of will preserve the order the fields were set). are you sure that the "text" we pass to the "action=edit" actually contains everything it's supposed to?

peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 18:27, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

No, I am not -- after seeing that the problem is reproducible. And yes, almost each browser I tested, compiles the request in the order of the object, Fiddler unveiled. -- RE rillke questions? 19:09, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

i did not understand your last response. does this mean you are on it? or do you want me to look at it? i did not test vigorously, but in the one feeble attempt i made, the problem actually was *not* reproduced. if you have a recipe to make this issue appear, and if you do not have time to dig into it, please post the recipe here. peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 22:51, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I saw the user's edits and thought JMCC1 could reproduce it. And I am not at it; I am simply too busy with my own scripts. You would be a great maintainer but the community decided to reject this proposal. So the community will suffer from its own decision. I would simply nominate you for adminship given the comments by the voters, though it wouldn't be very likely that it would fail. Perhaps you could get a global editinterface. -- RE rillke questions? 20:48, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

We could actually try again with a maintainer type idea; I think it suffered from being mixed in with other "group" proposals. Focussing on just that, it might have more chance to succeed. Rd232 (talk) 21:23, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

this is a very interesting discussion, but maybe it really belongs somewhere else...

returning to cat-a-lot woes: i volunteer to debug and try to solve it, if someone can provide a reproduction recipe. once i have a "patch" (presuming i'll have one), i am sure it won't be all that hard to find a sysop that will actually update the protected page. peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 15:34, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Duplicate category

I notice in this edit, that when you have duplicate category, if you use Cat-a-lot then both categories are renamed instead of delete duplicate category. --Smooth_O (talk) 12:49, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Just noticed this still happens; see the history of File:Bluebells - panoramio (3).jpg for example. For some reason a bot added the disambiguation cat Newark twice. When I moved the file with Cat-a-lot and then copied it to two other cats from the new location (all without actually seeing the wikitext, of course), all three lines got duplicated.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 20:47, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

flat file lists as input

Cat-a-lot is great, but it would be greater if I could take the results of a query from Cat Scan for example, trim them down as necessary for my purposes, and use the flat file list as input to Cat-a-lot. Is it conceivable that you could add such a feature? In this case, the page that Cat-a-lot was running "on" would not be relevant; instead of selecting files on that page with a mouse, I would select "manual file list" within Cat-a-lot, and paste in my file list, in the format

Category:Charles Backofen
Category:Charles Codman
Category:Charles Osgood
Category:Edward Troye
Category:Erastus Salisbury Field
Category:Fitz Hugh Lane
Category:Francis William Edmonds
Category:Frederick R. Spencer

and then select the destination category with the current interface options. In the above example, I want to add "c:19th-century painters from the United States" without having to select each one from "c:Painters from the United States" (imagine that the list has 100 entries...). More specifically, I want to move them from the old category, which leads to a variation of this suggestion. Another way of looking at this is that I want to paste in a list of files/categories that are programatically selected from the current category page, instead of the user clicking on each one. Short version: I am suggesting one or both of the following features: "Paste a list of files/categories to be selected programatically from the current page" allowing for adding OR moving; and/or "Paste a list of files/categories to be added to any category" (so the page I'm currently on does not matter to Cat-a-lot). If I had to pick one, I would pick the programmatic selection from the current category, as it allows for moving. I just gave an example but I believe this feature has broad applicability. Thanks for taking the time to read this message. Boo-Boo Baroo (talk) 05:46, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

That might be a useful cat-a-lot improvement, though as a current work around, if you have a list of files, you can paste them as a list of thumbnails on a sandbox page and use Help:VisualFileChange.js to make almost any change you are likely to want, including changing categories. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 06:29, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

When cross-posting, it would be kind to add a ref to the previous post: COM:HD#category additions in batch. But thanks for your suggestion. It sounds good. -- Rillke^(q?) 17:28, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you both for your replies. Rillke, I didn't see your reply there (about two weeks later) and thought my question was stale. Thanks for the info--I plan to try VisualFileChange for files--but there doesn't seem to be any solution for altering categories themselves (as you've noted). The main use I envision is dispersing categories that contain hundreds/thousands of other categories into more usable subsets (in the case of categories for people, by century, for example). Boo-Boo Baroo (talk) 19:24, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

working on template /doc

Hi, we use this great tool in fa.wiki according to Hebrew version, the only problem is when the category exists in /doc subpage it can not remove or edit or move that template's category! for example moving fa:رده:Language icon templates members. I tried to make a hack for it but doesn't work! would you please tell me where should i change? (fa:مدیاویکی:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js) yours, Yamaha5 (talk) 10:37, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Remove all categories but one

Is there any hope of seeing an upgrade soon that allows removing ALL categories from file(s) except a selected category? Maybe adding a small checkbox in the bottom right corner, that if checked, will do that. This would be extremely helpful in sorting large number of files that are excessively over-categorized but have their own specific category. --P199 (talk) 23:42, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

IMO Visual File Change will do. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 10:12, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

• What is Visual File Change? -- P 1 9 9  ✉ 18:00, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

  Help:VisualFileChange.js, you can use some regexes (a.k.a RegExpr, which can match any category except one or more specific categories) to do a replacement (to empty). --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 08:43, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

• Tried it and it is very cumbersome. Not the way to go. I strongly suggest to increase the functionality of Cat-a-lot. -- P 1 9 9  ✉ 18:21, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

This would be nice to have in Cat-a-lot. I'd certainly find it useful, and it would be more intuitive than Visual File Change. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:18, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that is a good idea. When using cat-a-lot in a category you see the files in that category, so you can see if they fit in the category or if they should be moved or copied to other categories. But you don't see which other categories the files are in, so you can't know if all those categories are wrong or not. /Ö 16:13, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Often enough, this has to be done to all files in a certain category, then you know it, otherwise you could look.

In my opinion, it would be more (very!) helpful to be able to remove all files in the current category from a different category. For example, removing all files in the current category from the category one level higher is something that has to be done all the time (because people over-categorize that way). Also, in these cases, no file should be in the current and the superordinate category, so selection is easy and not a lot can be done wrong. — Julian H.^✈(talk/files) 16:33, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I was thinking it would be more useful for search results. For example, I often categorise images of buildings, which might well be best placed in a category for that building and no other category (except hidden categories), but are often placed in categories of the city, the county, buildings in the city, and various other higher-level categories. I also agree with Julian H.'s suggested addition. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:35, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

We do need better tools for removing things from parent categories, and it would be great if catalot did that. But I agree that we would have a problem if we automatically removed all other categories without looking at the categories and images involved. For example, if I create a category for the stained glass windows in a church and make that a subcategory of both the church and stained glass windows in that county, then when I move images from the church to the stained glass windows in that church it would save a bit of work if they also came out of the other parent category stained glass windows in that county. But if one or two of them are in a category works by Veronica Whall then it would be wrong to remove that category. To some that would look like vandalism. WereSpielChequers (talk) 11:48, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

• Of course, like all other tools, such a feature should be used carefully by trusted users. But the potential for mistakes already exists for Cat-a-lot in its current state, so this is not a reason not to implement it. In fact, we need more powerful tools to keep up with the flood of images being uploaded... --P 1 9 9  ✉ 00:08, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

As you designed it can't be used carefully. If you don't make it automatic, perhaps listing the categories that would be removed then that could work. But automatically removing categories would mean undoing other people's categorisation work and slowing down the process of categorisation. We need better categorisation tools, automatically removing categories even if they are valid and useful would not be a better tool. Some of its edits would look like vandalism. WereSpielChequers (talk) 21:08, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

• We're open to suggestions. I offered one, thinking it might be the way to go, but if you don't think so, maybe you can suggest something else then... --P 1 9 9  ✉ 22:51, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

OK, here are a few:

1. Currently we can only search by keywords. Please could we search by geocode and bring up fifty thumbnails closest to the geocode you specify and then just click on the ones you want to put them in a particular category using catalot. This would be even more useful if it included the option to exclude ones in the same category.
2. Sometimes I'm splitting a village category into two or three villages of the same name in different counties. This is a slow process that requires lots of individual map searches. It would be much better if I could in a slightly similar way to above, have a tool that showed all the items in a category as points on a map, and then be able to draw a line on the map and send all on one side off to foo, Lincolnshire and the rest to Foo, Suffolk. This would also be incredibly useful in processing the backlog of geograph images as we have many geocodes that contain parts of two villages
3. It would be good to be able to see a list of all the categories that the images in a category are in, and then be able to click individual categories and mark them remove or move to parent. So I do a lot of English church categories. If I move twenty images into a category "St Foo's church, Boston, Lincolnshire" it would be good if I could then see a list such as, Images in this category are in the following categories:

4 in Gothic churches in Lincolnshire [] move to parent, [] remove

6 in Boston, Lincolnshire [] move to parent, [] remove

1 Pipistrelle bats in England [] move to parent, [] remove

2 in Anglican churches in Lincolnshire [] move to parent, [] remove

1 in stained glass windows in Lincolnshire [] move to parent, [] remove

1 in brick churches in Lincolnshire [] move to parent, [] remove

13 in Grade I listed churches in Lincolnshire [] move to parent, [] remove

14 in Churches in Boston, Lincolnshire [] move to parent, [] remove

I could then click the boxes as follows and save an awful lot of work, but without losing the work that others have done, including identifying that one of those images has a really nice photo of a bat and another of a stained glass window.

4 in Gothic churches in Lincolnshire [x] move to parent, [] remove

6 in Boston, Lincolnshire [] move to parent, [x] remove

1 Pipistrelle bats in England [] move to parent, [] remove

2 in Anglican churches in Lincolnshire [x] move to parent, [] remove

1 in stained glass windows in Lincolnshire [] move to parent, [] remove

1 in brick churches in Lincolnshire [x] move to parent, [] remove

13 in Grade I listed churches in Lincolnshire [x] move to parent, [] remove

14 in Churches in Boston, Lincolnshire [x] move to parent, [] remove

Currently to do the above example in hotcat you need to look at twenty images and a category, hit remove 40 times, and type out large parts of five categories to add them to the parent category. WereSpielChequers (talk) 08:33, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Uncategorizing; redirects

(Copied from Commons:Village Pump/Proposals#Cat-a-lot)

When you remove images from a category, they may end up uncategorized without your noticing it, and that may be worse than if the have a catgeory with limited relevance. If Cat-a-lot could warn the user when removing a category makes the image uncategorized, we could avoid some problems.

It would also be comfortable if Cat-a-lot automatically could change to the correct category when you move an image into a category redirect. It takes some time to figure out the correct categories. Actually, it sould not display redirects at all in the suggestions, that just leads you astray. --Jonund (talk) 17:57, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Request: Change white area to gray even on error

I routinely use cat-a-lot to go through an entire category page of images and process them all. Normally, after selecting and then processing an image, the white field used to select the image turns gray and a description of what was done is added to it. However, when trying to add a category to an image that already has it, this does not happen, and the whitespace is turned white again. This can cause me to try to process it again, since I don't process them in the order shown on the page.

Please change the whitespace to gray and report the failure in it the same way that successful actions are reported.

On a related note, if you accidentally leave the page (e.g. by clicking a link instead of the whitespace just after it), you lose all that valuable information about which files you have processed already (i.e. all the gray turns white again). There is a message that appears when you edit a wiki page and try to leave it without saving. It would be nice if, when you attempt to leave a page on which cat-a-lot is active, it would give that message if there are images on the page that have not been processed (i.e. still have whitespace, selected or not, instead of gray) so you can choose to stay on the page instead of navigating away and losing that information. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 03:19, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Listbox of categories doesn't show some

When I start typing in the category text field in cat-a-lot "Blue, red, white" (without the quotes), I get a drop-down list of 10 categories, including:

Blue, red, white packaging
Blue, red, white road signs

Blue, red, white ribbon bars should be between these two, but does not appear until I additionally type SPACEr, which then gives just:

Blue, red, white road signs
Blue, red, white ribbon bars

(the only two that match the pattern "Blue, red, white r"). Why doesn't Blue, red, white ribbon bars appear at first? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 02:32, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Thoughts on category sorting

Since the code is currently getting reworked, I wanted to get some feedback on some thoughts I'd been having. One of the biggest user-level time-wasting maintenance problems on Commons is that there's no simple way to move images that are in Category A and Category B into Category C. Right now, in order to do this, you have to move the files twice from each of the two parent categories. That's annoying, and leads to errors where an image is missed in one category.

The easy way to do it would be to have the ability to choose images in Category A with Cat-a-lot, and be able to either a) then move or copy from Category B into Category C or b) (preferrably) move in one shot from A and B into C.

The harder way I asked at Help talk:FastCCI#The Perennial Question, but I thought I'd get some feedback here too. If Cat-a-lot modified to talk to FastCCI, then the intersections generated by FastCCI could be used to transfer. I suspect that would require a pretty difficult amount of work to implement, though. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 20:37, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Keep in mind that currently FastCCI has no interface to limit the intersection to a depth of zero (which is what you seem to want), instead it scans deep into subcategories and may return a lot more results than you want. --Dschwen (talk) 07:33, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

In theory a combined search with, for example incategory:"Foo" incategory:"Bar", should return the intersection. -- Rillke^(q?) 10:15, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

How does that work in Cat-a-lot? (talk) 14:14, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

You go to Special:Search, select the file namespace, search for incategory:"Foo" incategory:"Bar" and then use cat-a-lot to categorize the result. -- Rillke^(q?) 09:39, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

The problem, I think, is that cat-a-lot can only add categories when working with search results, when often the objective is to move them out of one or more of the other categories. (Apologies to Pi.1415926535 if this isn't what you were trying to get at.) --jnkyrdsprkl (talk) 20:34, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that is exactly the problem, you said it better than I. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 20:53, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Possible select-all bug: double-counting?

When most of the files in a category are to be copied or moved to the same place, it‘s easier to select all of them, then deselect the exceptions, than to select those wanted one by one. This evening I accidentally misdirected a group of files that I‘d deselected but were moved anyway. Investigating the problem I noticed that after clicking “Select all” in the Cat-a-lot panel, the displayed count was double the number of files actually shown on the page, while deselecting a file would decrement the count by only one. So I’d apparently deselected the files but not their ‘ghosts’, so to speak, and these invisible duplicate selections caused the files to be included in the batch. In case it’s relevant, the page in question was a disambiguation category (that I was trying to empty).—Odysseus1479 (talk) 09:22, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

@Odysseus1479: Are you still be able to select ghosts somewhere through the select all link? -- Rillke^(q?) 09:48, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Now that I‘m actually looking for somewhere it will happen again … of course not! I’ll keep looking, though, and if it comes up I’ll report it right away without moving anything. BTW I’ve seen the double count before, but since I didn’t try to deselect anything on those occasions it had no apparent effect on the operation.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 10:40, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

I’m back to report that when I selected-all in Playa, where there were 23 files, Cat-a-lot said 46 were selected. I had Gallery Details active at the time; guessing it might be involved, I reloaded the page and this time the select-all count was correct. I also noticed that if I activated GD with Cat-a-lot already open, clicking near the filenames had no effect on the selected or deselected status; clicking “Select none” returned the count to 0 but left the highlighting in place. In short, there seems to be a conflict or incompatibility between these gadgets, in my ‘environment’ at least. With GD already activated, selecting or deselecting one item at a time works normally. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do in the way of testing.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 06:04, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Cat-a-lot in gallery pages bug?

I am trying to add the category Category:Taken with Sony DSC-WX70 to some 10,000 files, but Cat-a-lot hangs after categorizing a few thousand files. I tried in Chrome first, it stopped at 1,900 count. Then I tried in Firefox and it stopped at 3,400. Then I tried in Chromium and it hanged at 8,600. Maybe this happens because of the browser limitations though? -- Fructibus (talk) 22:02, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

@Fructibus: Hm, maybe, but there is also a speed cap for edits for normal users (which you should have exceeded by far). High probably your gallery exceeds the normal view limit too (it does not display for me). -- User: Perhelion 23:36, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

@Perhelion: Ohh, I didn't know about the speed cap. How much is it? Can you limit Cat-a-lot speed to stay below that? Well, I must admit it's quite easy for me to ask for all kind of new features.. :D -- Fructibus (talk) 23:51, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

Normally the limit is 8 hits/minute, maybe for autopatroller as you the limit is higher. We could implement MediaWiki:Gadget-libAPI.js, which has a time handling of this (but I'm not sure yet on this). -- User: Perhelion 00:42, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

@Perhelion: I think such a speed limit might be already documented, shall I ask at the village pump about it?

Meanwhile I would like to ask for another feature, related to this: to add a button to select all the file links. When the user selects the files in a search result or in a category or in a gallery, they actually select file links. Therefore I think it's not a significant difference to select links too. For example I would like to select all the image links in this page: User:Fructibus/C. Then the users won't need to create a gallery - when a gallery contains thousands of images, the browser consumes a lot of memory and processor power. -- Fructibus (talk) 08:23, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

I got another indication: I just tested Cat-a-lot with the same gallery of 10,054 images, to add them in a category where they were already added, and the gadget hanged at the item 8078. There is no edit on the server, so this is a browser limitation for sure. -- Fructibus (talk) 20:59, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

@Fructibus: So I can't fix this here. But I can fulfill your second request (select all files). I would fulfill this combined with this request #flat file lists as input -- User: Perhelion 17:24, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

That's such a great news, thanks! :) -- Fructibus (talk) 19:36, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

@Perhelion: There's an OOM condition here. getContent() is called with an immediate for loop in getTargetCat(), and editCategories() is only an event handler of getContent(). This causes the doAPICall()s from getContent() be effectively executed before every single doAPICall()s from editCategories(). Since browser usually has a limit of per-domain concurrent requests, no edit can be made until all the wikitext of thousands of pages are loaded, effectively breaking garbage collection. I wonder if there is a workaround. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 08:39, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes indeed, thanks for pointing this out. I also thought on an API call like in AQD. I'll do this also soon. -- User: Perhelion 11:01, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Btw: As I see right now, this could be useful too. -- User: Perhelion 16:12, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Bug: cat-a-lot does not detect failed edits

When an edit fails, cat-a-lot doesn't detect it. For example, try to categorize File:Example.jpg. (assuming you are not an admin)

Because of the ratelimit a massive number of categorizations was lost. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 15:32, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Cannot save preferences

Hello Cat-a-lot maintainers - It's been brought up on the Cantonese Wikipedia that Cat-a-lot is unable to save preferences there. We've updated to the newest version of the script this month but that didn't help. Can a maintainer of this script go and have a look? Deryck Chan (talk) 10:44, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

notice that this gadget requires 2 other gadgets: MediaWiki:Gadget-SettingsManager.js, and MediaWiki:Gadget-SettingsUI.js. these files on cantinese wikipedia seems to be out of date. i can't guarantee that getting an updated version will fix the problem, but this is the first thing i would try. peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 06:11, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

I've updated MediaWiki:Gadget-SettingsManager.js - one line has been updated which concerns some deprecation of a regex-related function. The other gadget is up to date. User:Roy17 - Can you check whether you can save preferences now? Deryck Chan (talk) 12:58, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes it's working now. Thanks a lot! --Roy17 (talk) 13:08, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

How to force cat-a-lot to "turn on"

So if I make a table using PetScan, say, one that looks like this, is there like a magic word or something that I can insert into the page to make cat-a-lot treat that page as if it is a category?…to make it "turn on"? Because I need to make three changes to every page in that list (remove two parent cats, add one child), and if I could just get the dang thing to turn on, I can do it in about 30 seconds. I then need to repeat that process…I dunno…a few hundred times. GMG^talk 15:20, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Hey GreenMeansGo, currently not (as the starting config is namespace depending). Is there a way you can move the talk pages to the (foreground) subject-pagename⁉ On the other hand we could add an user-config-option for talk-namespace⁉ But you could try mw.libs.catALot.init() in the browser console (or as bookmarklet). But as I see now we need more as a "turn on" here. Currently a list is not supported, but is already a top feature requested. -- User: Perhelion 22:37, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Would be super duper if we could get worked out. Just be able to insert like _CATALOTPLZ_ or something in the page and have it click on for a custom table. GMG^talk 23:13, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

i think this can be done today, with no change to the gadget itself, which is complicated enough as it is (did not test or verified this!!!), by moving the list to a page in category namespace (not such a huge sacrifice - you can appropriate one page in cat namespace for this exercise).

all you have to do, i think, is organize the links in a list, instead of the table they currently reside in. you'll prablably have to wrap this list in some divs with appropriate classes (to mimic normal structure of category page), an trick catalot to think these are legit category page, with list of pages (or files) in the category.

ttbomk, catalot does not execute any API call to find if the pages are indeed in some cat, and instead uses the cat html content, so if you mimic it close enough (should be easy - maybe nest 2 or 3 divs), i believe catalot will work for you.

note that if this works, you have to remember that there no actual category to remove, so only use "add", never "remove" or "move". peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 19:30, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Well if there's a way to figure out how to make it work like that, it's beyond me. I don't really have any frame of reference for how nesting divs would make it work. Just seems to recognize the wikilinks as wikilinks regardless. GMG^talk 20:32, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

sorry for the over-tech-talk. using "edit source", add to a page in category namespace, something like that:

<div id="mw-pages">
* [[first page you want to convert]]
* [[second page you want to convert]]
* [[third page you want to convert]]
* etc. etc. etc.
</div>

again, i did not test it myself, and i can't guarantee it will work, so you probably want to try it with a short list of pages before going the whole nine yards. you can probably find a way to use search/replace with some text editor, to convert the table you have now, to list, which cat-a-lot expect (i.e., lines beginning with "*"). also, in your cat-a-lot preferences, make sure to allow non-media pages. ("Allow categorising pages (including categories) that are not files"). hope this helps - קיפודנחש (talk)

how to use this on Wikipedia

The instructions state "you can install it [cat-a-lot] manually in your user JavaScript settings with following code:...". Question: how/where exactly are the "user JavaScript settings" in en Wikipedia/my PC where I am supposed to do this work? Hmains (talk) 22:49, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

@Hmains: assuming you use the default “Vector” skin, that would be en:User:Hmains/vector.js. At any rate, there should be a link to the right place beside the skin you use in the Appearance pane of your Preferences.—Odysseus1479 (talk) 23:18, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

found ok. I will check it out. Thanks Hmains (talk) 23:26, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

• Cat-a-lot is working ok in en-Wikipedia, but the instructions here say this: "The semi-automatic preferences are not loaded with this example, so you need to set this also manually (because it supports only Commons, although it is theoretically possible, if you load all the local needed extra modules)". How exactly do it do this? Currently, I cannot, say, 'select all categories' to work with. Also cannot bring up the 'preferences panel' Thanks Hmains (talk) 17:57, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Request regarding copying and sortkeys

Currently, Cat-a-lot will preserve the previous sortkey if a page is copied from one category to another. Would it be possible to toggle this behaviour so you could use the copy function without adding the "old" sortkey? This would be useful whereever the "Defaultsort" entry is preferred over any local sortkeys. De728631 (talk) 20:48, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Ignore all the ones in Category:Wikidata infobox maintenance

I suggest to the developers that all subcats of Category:Wikidata infobox maintenance be ignored by cat-a-lot, because they are automatically added by {{Wikidata infobox}}. They are not meant to be added manually. They are also taking up too much space in the cat-a-lot menu because almost every cat using the infobox has three or more Uses of Wikidata Infobox blah blah blah.--Roy17 (talk) 17:34, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Check over-categorization

What does "Check over-categorization" do? I couldn't find an explanation anywhere. Is there a way to keep only the most specific categories to affected files? The RedBurn (talk) 21:49, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Hello RedBurn, this is indeed one of the last undocumented features of the gadget, but it should match with COM:OVERCAT. Maybe it should be described with a warning of use, as it is not always applicable. So it can't work automatically (if you want this). So you need the exact way it works? Technically it simply checks if the file is already in the parent-cat or sub-cat. -- User: Perhelion 13:46, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

I think he was asking for user instructions. As far as I understand it, you need to:

• Click Select "all", "Files", or "Categories".
• Click "Check over-categorization"
• Cat-a-lot will mark affected files with a green dotted frame. That's all.

Is this correct? --Sitacuisses (talk) 15:55, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Perhelion and Sitacuisses, I think that answers it perfectly! And what I was expecting it to do then is the third feature asked by Jeff G. below. The RedBurn (talk) 17:16, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Feature requests for over-categorization

1. Configurable limit for traveling up the tree
2. Configurable limit for traveling down the tree
3. Ability to fix over-categorization by removing the upper cat automatically
4. Configurability to ignore "(flat category)" for overcat purposes

  — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 16:47, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Could Cat-a-lot add the function to move the disambiguation pages?

There are too much pages using template:disambig or template:disambiguation crowded in categories of disambiguation. If cat-a-lot could deal with the disambiguation pages, it will be faster to clean them. 迴廊彼端 (talk) 10:13, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Hello 迴廊彼端, that would be far too much for CaL, because this requires an extra level of logic, what this picture is to be concrete. Simple removal does not seem to be an option. -- User: Perhelion 07:29, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Local help page

I created a local help page on Hebrew Wikipedia. Is it possible to link to it from the gadget panel? דגש חזק (talk) 22:33, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Cat-a-lot "helps with moving files (or subcategories) between categories"

How exactly can I use cat-a-lot to move subcategories, as the description suggests? I'd like to move 500 subcategories from one category to another category, but how? Eissink (talk) 11:27, 22 April 2020 (UTC).

Open Cat-a-lot, click on "Preferences", make sure that "Allow categorising pages (including categories) that are not files" is checked. If it is, it should work like with files, by clicking beside the category name. Tokfo (talk) 11:50, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you! It never occured to me that I could click 'Preferences'... Thanks! Eissink (talk) 12:09, 22 April 2020 (UTC).

Disable in other pages

Is it possible to make Cat-a-lot visible only in category pages? It feels quite annoying and distracting to see them in mainspace articles. --Kailash29792 (talk) 05:31, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Request: add class "noprint" to the main box

When trying to print ANY content or category page in Commons where this gadget may be used and is visible, if we try to print, the "Cat-a-lot" box appears on EVERY printed page, over the actual content we want to print (it appears partly at top of the printed page with the shadow and bottom border of the box, and the rest at bottom, within the printable margins of the page; there's no way to hide this unwanted box).

Please add the class "noprint" to the main container of the Cat-a-loc" box, that should never be printed, even if it's visible during navigation. Or use CSS "@media print{ /*selector of the box*/ {display:none}}".

Thanks. verdy_p (talk) 01:28, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Allow translating Cat-a-lot's name

The tool shows a yellow box at the bottom of the page with the label "Cat-a-lot" in it. This label should become translatable. This is particularly useful for languages that do not use Latin alphabet (e.g. Persian, Cantonese, Hindi, etc.) Huji (talk) 18:49, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Installation on non-Wikimedia projects

I wonder if it possible to install cat-a-lot to other non-Wikimedia wikis. The instructions only said If Cat-a-lot is not present as gadget in your local Wikimedia project (like Wikipedia). pandakekok9 13:06, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

@Pandakekok9: Two months late but I saw this now. I don't really know what you mean since the help page explicitly tells you how you add it on, for example enwikipedia. You can see w:User:Jonteemil/common.js how I've copied the help page example.Jonteemil (talk) 16:17, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Request: add page to category

so we have tools to add categories to pages (e.g. hotcat), and cat-a-lot, which manipulate pages via the category page. so i can select an article or file from the category page, and without leaving the category, remove this article. what i'm missing is the reverse action: add page to the category, regardless of how (or even if) this file or article is categorized now. should be pretty simple - pop a new input line with autocompletion, similar to the "category" input line, except it should be for any page, not just categories, and click.

bonus points for textarea, where i could paste a multi-line list of pages, but for me, at least, this is secondary. the ability to "pull" a page into a category from the category page itself would be very useful in many cases. peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 19:45, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Difficult to use on mobile devices (suggestions)

On mobile devices the screens are often curved, causing part of the Cat-a-lot link to be invisible, so it only reads "Cat-a" and is difficult to click on since the very corner of the screen is not as responsive or easy to touch. The font size and size for the floating text to start the tool are also too small. Suggestions:

• Please add it to Page tools menu, rather than having to scroll to the bottom turn back up to run it
• Move floating text slightly higher up, and add a border at least 2em in size
• Increase the text size for both the floating text and the X to close the tool
• Change the close X to be "X (close)" or add an icon so it's much larger to select
• Improve the instructions by including a screenshot showing where to find the tool

Great tool! Thanks to all contributors. Amousey (talk) 11:26, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Reverting the removal of many files from a category

I accidentally removed 194 files from the category Category:Hydraulics.

It seems that the "revert" button was only available temporarily. I remember seeing it but as I had not realized my mistake by then I did not use it in time.

Can the action be reverted nonetheless?

best regards,

--KaiKemmann (talk) 11:32, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Btw, what is the meaning of the sign "#" behind the category name in https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Hydraulics#/media/File:Bühne_der_Felsenreitschule,_Salzburg_(04).jpg for example?

Thankfully my mistake was now reverted by an administrator but it would still be helpful to have information about a suggested revert mechanism on the help page ..

Cat-a-lot nuisance clutter

Recently a whole lot of hidden parent categories have been appearing in Cat-a-lot's listings for a category; e.g. Category:Carduelis carduelis includes Category:Biology categories with double wikidata item, Category:Biology pages with wikidata item specified in VN, Category:Biology pages with wikidata link, Category:Interwiki from wikidata, Category:Uses of Wikidata Infobox, Category:Taxon categories, Category:Uses of Wikidata Infobox for taxons, and so on. All of these push the subcategories that one actually wants to use, off the bottom of the page where they have to be scrolled to - very tedious. In the vast majority of uses of Cat-a-lot, one doesn't use these. Can these hidden parent categories be, well, hidden, from the Cat-a-lot list, unless specifically asked for in Cat-a-lot Options, please? (i.e., add an option in Preferences "Show hidden parent categories"). Thanks! - MPF (talk) 21:08, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Cat-a-lot cannot handle white characters

I've noticed that if some of white characters is present in the code of the changed category (caused mostly by copying, e.g. left-to-right mark (‎): [[Category:ABC‎]] – see the code with CodeMirror), Cat-a-lot won't move the file to other category as the category cannot be found. The copying is not affected, though. — Draceane ^talk_contrib. 20:42, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Please add link to Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot in the box

I, like many others probably, don't use Cat-a-lot often enough to remember how to use it correctly at times. I have made some serious errors in the past that required a lot of work to correct.

If I had the help link in the popup Cat-a-lot box, then I could quickly figure it out again. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:11, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

@Timeshifter: the question mark in the lower right corner of the box.--RZuo (talk) 08:35, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

I removed the resolved template. I don't think the question mark is that helpful. I didn't notice it until you pointed it out to me. I still use Cat-a-lot occasionally, but still forget important stuff between uses. So I waste time figuring it out again. A simple "Help" link would help solve the problem. The help page needs to be updated now and then too. --Timeshifter (talk) 11:40, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

It is requested that an edit or modification be made to this protected page.
Administrators: Please apply <nowiki> or {{Tl}} to the tag after the request is fulfilled.

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Fulfill this request after checking that the code is safe, beautify and escape unsafe characters

Nakonana

change MediaWiki:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js#L-195 to

		} ).text( 'Help' ) );

--RZuo (talk) 12:36, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

cat-a-lot edit tags

so i tried to decipher from documentation and from code, and couldn't figure it out.

it seems that cat-a-lot edits are tagged on commons, but not when loading the gadget from other projects (using mw.loader.load() ), which we do on hewiki.

is there a way to tell cat-a-lot to add an edit tag on other wikis? for reference, here is the hewiki cat-a-lot gadget source:

if ( mw.config.get( 'wgNamespaceNumber') == 14 ) {
	window.catALotPrefs = { editpages:  true, subcatcount: 500 };
	mw.loader.using(['jquery.ui', 'mediawiki.util']).done(function(){
		mw.util.addCSS("#cat_a_lot { left: inherit !important; }"); // for some reason, cat-a-lot from commons has a quirk with RLT, and this fixes it
		mw.util.addCSS("#cat_a_lot_settings { display:none !important;}"); // preferences depend on some other gadgets,not available on hewiki, so hide linkette
	  	mw.loader.load('//commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');
	  	mw.loader.load('//commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css', 'text/css');
	});
}

thanks. peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 18:33, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

MediaSearch

Will the gadget be fixed to work with MediaSearch? --INS Pirat (talk) 20:53, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

+1. this would be really good.

1. line 422 findAllLabels
2. line 1518

i think these parts need to be edited. RZuo (talk) 11:58, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Enwiki

This doesn't quite behave properly when categorising redirects (it edit a the redirect target). Also, I'm not sure how the preferences work (nothing happens when clicking on the button), but it says in #cat-a-lot edit tags preferences depend on some other gadgets,not available on hewiki, so hide linkette. Presumably this is the same, though still not sure how to change it? (Please ping me, or I won't see any replies.) Qwerfjkl (talk) 21:16, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Pinging @Jeff G. (Not sure where to announce this, as the page notice says). Qwerfjkl (talk) 21:15, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: I can confirm the reported behavior and speculate that following redirects is usually a wanted behavior (categorizing redirects is not done on Commons).   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 09:31, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Jeff G. Would it be possible to do this on other wikis? Qwerfjkl (talk) 13:00, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: Sorry, I don't know. Pinging @Krinkle, Kwj2772, Steinsplitter as recent editors of the script who still have access.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 09:31, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Case-sensitive categories

This was brought up at the village pump. It seems that categories didn't use to be case-sensitive and now are. To reproduce: Add the Cat-a-Lot category to this page. Previously it would have been transformed into the correct Cat-a-lot. Thanks. Cryptic-waveform (talk) 19:34, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Hi, for devs to reproduce this a bit more: the auto-suggestions that pop up in HotCat are inconsistently incomplete. My example is to go by "Openstreetmap maps of fran...", there is no suggestion to continue with "...France", but "...Frankfurt" is still available. Only after changing all three upper cases, is France the second option to complete the input. --Enyavar (talk) 12:48, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

This isn't an issue anymore. Cryptic-waveform (talk) 14:27, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Making a stable version of getMarkedLabels()

It is requested that an edit or modification be made to this protected page.
Administrators: Please apply <nowiki> or {{Tl}} to the tag after the request is fulfilled.

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Nakonana

I noticed this function that returns selected files:

mw.libs.catALot.getMarkedLabels()

But it has a strange return type! Try it in your console. An user expects an iterable array but it's not. An user also expects each element as a clean self-describing object but they are not.

How to fix that? Let's create another function for backward-compatibility. For example:

mw.libs.catALot.getMarkedLabelsArray()

This new proposal should return a clean array, with simple objects. So it's more stable and can be used from other gadgets as well!

Here the example return type:

[
  {
    fullPageName: "Complete title of the page with namespace",
    selectedEl:   "jQuery selector of the selected box",
  },
  ...
]

OK OK. How to do that?

I have worked on a safe copy-paste version to fix that. This can be done by any sysop or interface admin. Here how:

1. Copy this source: Special:PermaLink/617020624
2. Paste here: MediaWiki:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js
3. View diff (it's very small)
4. Save!

That's all! <3

Can I do something more?

Sure! I also prepared another version, that is more risky since it's a refactor to clean stuff:

1. Copy this source: User:Valerio Bozzolan/MediaWiki:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js
2. Test in your browser console
3. Say here if it works for you:
   1. Tested adding and removing a category and it just works, maybe we should test other things --Valerio Bozzolan (talk) 14:43, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
   2. Tested by moving some files in a category, and then picking more files and moving to another category (also without reloading the page) and it works --Valerio Bozzolan (talk) 09:04, 7 January 2022 (UTC)
   3. Tested by ...

When we reach a certain number of reviewers we can save. Thank you for your participation! --Valerio Bozzolan (talk) 14:43, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Non-mainspace pages

On enwiki (at least), I think the gadget doesn't recognise pages not in the mainspace e.g. User: - it just says "No files selected" when you try to perform an action. Qwerfjkl (talk) 18:40, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Can't save preferences

I'm getting "Error saving User:Joeyconnick/common.js. Code is missingparam." Can someone help me out? —Joeyconnick (talk) 19:44, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Can't use Cat-a-lot in Chromium

Hi, for some reason I can't use Cat-a-lot in the Chromium browser. After having 'maximized' Cat-a-lot in a category, then selecting white space around an image, nothing happens. Anyone else with this problem? --oSeveno (User talk) 13:34, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Cat-a-lot not working on Chrome/Android

Since a few days (since Monday?) Cat-a-lot isn't working on smartphones with Chrome browser. The reason is the user comment field displayed. Searching for another category the virtual keyboard does not display the return key. Instead of the return key tab or next key is displayed - and the search for the category name in the search field doesn't work. The cursor switches to the user comment (pressing "next" on the virtual keyboard). Here the return key is displayed on the virtual keyboard, but it has no function. As workaround I've added mw.util.addCSS("#cat_a_lot_comment { display:none !important;}"); to my common.js. I've the difficult to explain problem only on smartphone browsers. --XRay 💬 04:37, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

@King of Hearts: Probably this is the reason why I tried to solve the problem for a long time yesterday: Revision of 628829593. --XRay 💬 05:07, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

@Alexis Jazz: Are you able to reproduce this? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:23, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

If you are not able to reproduce it, I can make Screenshots and send it. But I won't upload Screenshots (seen by public) here. --XRay 💬 08:00, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Easier. Here are 2 screenshots: [6] I'll remove the access to the screenshots if you've seen them. --XRay 💬 08:19, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

@XRay, King of Hearts any updates? —MdsShakil (talk) 16:04, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I've got access to a modified version. This version is working fine. --XRay 💬 17:10, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I too can't use it any more on Android. Can't select a category that I've typed in. Android WebView 101 on Android 11 to be precise.--Vera ^(talk) 18:43, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm now getting this error:

Uncaught TypeError: $searchInput.autocomplete is not a function from https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core%2Coojs-ui-widgets%7Coojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-advanced&skin=vector&version=ve7ok at line 52:838 TypeError: $searchInput.autocomplete is not a function at initAutocomplete (https://commons.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript:254:17) at fire (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core%2Coojs-ui-widgets%7Coojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-advanced&skin=vector&version=ve7ok:46:934) at Object.fireWith [as resolveWith] (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core%2Coojs-ui-widgets%7Coojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-advanced&skin=vector&version=ve7ok:48:135) at deferred.<computed> [as resolve] (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core%2Coojs-ui-widgets%7Coojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-advanced&skin=vector&version=ve7ok:51:632) at <anonymous>:769:951 at Object.enqueue (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:10:831) at mw.loader.using (<anonymous>:769:910) at HTMLAnchorElement.<anonymous> (https://commons.wikimedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript:328:15) at HTMLAnchorElement.dispatch (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core%2Coojs-ui-widgets%7Coojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-advanced&skin=vector&version=ve7ok:70:260) at elemData.handle (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core%2Coojs-ui-widgets%7Coojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-advanced&skin=vector&versionVera ^(talk) 19:46, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

This arises when I try to use cat-a-lot on Special:Search Vera ^(talk) 20:13, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Cat-a-lot covers "Add links" link for non-linked pages

Hello, I'm from ckbwiki. It's a RTL language. I just wanted to say that the Cat-a-lot gadget covers "Add links" link for non-linked pages. I think it should be fixed to the left. Thanks! Aram (talk) 15:46, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

MediaWiki “flips” the CSS rules automatically when it detects that the user interface language is different from the site language. This works well on Commons; on ckbwiki, however, MediaWiki expects the CSS rules to be aligned for right-to-left languages. This also means that left-to-right languages like English get rules that are aligned for right-to-left languages, so you can just take the CSS for English (which is flipped) and copy it to the local stylesheet. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 13:09, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

@Tacsipacsi: Thanks for the reply! I have another question. Why the preferences link are not available on Wikipedia project? I can see it just on Commons. Additionally, I think the source of L-20 in the CSS page is broken. Thanks! Aram (talk) 13:22, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Cat-a-lot not working for on-screen keyboards

With cat-a-lot, if I have an on-screen keyboard on android I can't OK my input when I hit enter. Instead the cursor switches to the "custom edit comment" field. This makes this gadget unusuable. Vera ^(talk) 19:31, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

I looked into this further. It seems that my on-screen keyboard tries to be helpful and replace the "enter" key with a "next field" key if the form has multiple input fields. I've for now added the code of cat-a-lot to a user page and made the comment field hidden. This fixes it for me for now. I found this StackOverflow comment that says the "next input field" key produces key event nr. 229. It wasn't as simple as adding that as an OR to the Enter key's 13. The StackOverflow comment also says it produces an "Unidentified" key event. Adding another event listener that has "Unidentified" as its event and key 229 didn't work for me. This is probably too obscure a bug to fix. Another fix would be to have an actual button that triggers the same event as hitting enter now does.

On a side note, I'm not a fan of using the placeholder value as a label. You shouldn't use placeholder value as a label. --Vera ^(talk) 11:50, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi, could you give me ELI5, step-by-step instructions on how to implement your work around for this issue? I also struggle with it, but I think it used to work properly until 1-2 months or so ago, so that's a rather new bug to me. Nakonana (talk) 15:33, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Stub tag spacing issue on Enwiki

Hi,

If it is the bottom category being changed, any lines of spacing below the category will be removed which causes an issue when it comes to stub tags. The MOS requires two lines of spacing between the categories and stub tag. Example. Not sure if anything can be done about this? Thanks! Jevansen (talk) Jevansen (talk) 02:58, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Getting unexpected results with "Check over-categorization"

When I go to Category Landschaftsschutzgebiet innerhalb des Naturparks Hassberge (ehemals_Schutzzone), select files An der Hohen Straße westlich von Kottenbrunn 4.jpg and Aufgang zum Streifberg bei Ostheim.jpg and "Check over-categorization", the first file is marked over-categorized while the second is not. However, both are in same categories (and both are not over-categorized). Why is the first file marked? Plozessor (talk) 11:51, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

i dont know. it's weird. here're the lists of cats on each file right now.

Extended content

[[:File:An der Hohen Straße westlich von Kottenbrunn 4.jpg]] CC-BY-SA-4.0 Files with coordinates missing SDC location of creation (50° N, 10°E) Images from Wiki Loves Earth 2023 Images from Wiki Loves Earth 2023 in Germany Images from Wiki Loves Earth 2023, DE landscape Images from Wiki Loves Earth missing SDC depicts Images from Wiki Loves Earth missing SDC location of creation Images from Wiki Loves Earth missing SDC participant in Landschaftsschutzgebiet innerhalb des Naturparks Hassberge (ehemals Schutzzone) Pages with maps Photos of protected areas by Stephan van Helden Self-published work Uploaded via Campaign:wle-de [[:File:Aufgang zum Streifberg bei Ostheim.jpg]] CC-BY-SA-4.0 Files with coordinates missing SDC location of creation (50° N, 10°E) Germany photographs taken on 2017-03-26 Images from Wiki Loves Earth 2021 Images from Wiki Loves Earth 2021 in Germany Images from Wiki Loves Earth 2021, DE landscape Images from Wiki Loves Earth 2021, DE-BY Images from Wiki Loves Earth missing SDC depicts Images from Wiki Loves Earth missing SDC location of creation Landschaftsschutzgebiet innerhalb des Naturparks Hassberge (ehemals Schutzzone) Pages with maps Photos of protected areas by Stephan van Helden Self-published work Uploaded via Campaign:wle-de-by

--RZuo (talk) 19:56, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

@RZuo I really can't get any meaningful results from this function. When I open Category 'Ermershausen', select all files and run "Check over-categorization", it highlights three files:

• Ermershausen Blick zum Sportplatz
• Der Dippacher Berg westlich von Ermershausen
• Winging over Germany - panoramio

But none of these images is over-categorized. None is in a child or parent category of "Ermershausen". Plozessor (talk) 16:44, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Is it possible that the script fails to parse certain files (due non-English characters, uncommon formatting, etc.)? Plozessor (talk) 16:47, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

it's really weird. for File:广州南尽头 - Southmost Land of Guangzhou - 2012.03 - panoramio.jpg, before my edit, when i tested it in Category:Guangzhou, it was considered overcat. after my edit (which i only moved it down Category:Guangzhou, added a newly created cat, and removed "check categories" template), and when i tested it in Category:Ji Sap Cung, it's not overcat. RZuo (talk) 17:12, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Adding the first category to an article at enwiki

At enwiki, Cat-a-lot does not remove the uncategorized tag when adding the first category to an uncategorized article (example). –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 07:42, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

@LaundryPizza03: Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot#Preferences.--RZuo (talk) 08:35, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

The button in the Cat-a-lot popup does nothing. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 16:30, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Logo

A proposed logo for the cat-a-lot gadget.

This is somewhat frivolous, but, after using this script for the first time (which took ten seconds), I proceeded to design a logo for it in Inkscape (which took half an hour). What do you think (you can see my weak explanation at the file description)? Edward-Woodrow (talk) 22:29, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Cross cat mergers?

Is this a good tool for generating the common entries in Category:Purple things and Category:People Eaters and moving them to Category:Purple People Eaters? Thank you.Naraht (talk) 13:59, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

@Naraht: i think the short answer is no.

theoretically, to accomplish what you describe, you can do a search of deepcat:"A" deepcat:"B", then use catalot to move all search results from A to the target new cat C, then use catalot again to remove all from B.

it's easier to do this with com:vfc and do a "custom replace".--RZuo (talk) 08:37, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

RZuoThank you, I'll take a look.Naraht (talk) 15:32, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Mobile-frontend-return-to-page

this message seems to be undefined?--RZuo (talk) 08:37, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Yep, I noticed to. Instead of "OK" or "Close" or some such, we’re getting "〈Mobile-frontend-return-to-page〉". Kinda annoying, especially the mobile part: The thought that existent workflows are being disrupted, and that development effort is being made at all, to cater for the pie-in-the-sky notion that people will be engaging in mass recategorization via a handheld device… Images of tophat gentlemen riding penyfarthing bicycles come to mind. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 21:31, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Minor edit unmarking feature not working

Disabling the feature to mark edits as minor doesn't appear to work, particularly on enwiki (which says that category changes should not be marked as minor), if done by manually editing one's own global.js. ミラP@Miraclepine 05:01, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Azerbaijani translation

{{Edit request}} Hello. Can anyone add this code to MediaWiki:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js/az? I don't have permission to create that page. --Nemoralis (talk) 08:17, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

@Nemoralis: Hi. Can you please create a js page in your userpace with the code, I will just move the page then as I'm unable to copy-paste the code without error. Also please leave templates as it is (those between {{ and }}, parameters in plural template should be translated though) as templates with those translated names do not exist, see MediaWiki:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js/de for example. Thanks! -- CptViraj (talk) 12:16, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

@CptViraj, here you go: User:Nemoralis/cat-a-lot-az.js Nemoralis (talk) 12:20, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

 Done. -- CptViraj (talk) 12:39, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Check over-categorization

What does the option "Check over-categorization" do? This is not explained anywhere. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 16:13, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

@LaundryPizza03 It ensures that pages are not overcategorized (qv).   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 00:06, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

There seem to be lots of false negatives where an article is more than one level down from the current category; can you confirm this? –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 00:11, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

@LaundryPizza03: Do you have any particular pages that are overcategorized but undetected by the gadget when checking on a particular category? Specifics, please.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 01:27, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

en:Goop (company) is in both en:Category:Pseudoscience and en:Category:Alternative medicine organizations two levels down, and a Cat-a-lot run on the higher category fails to identify "Goop (company)" as an overcategorized page. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 01:46, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

(ec)@LaundryPizza03: When I selected all in the latter cat and clicked "Check over-categorization", the gadget found (and highlighted with a dotted border) seven overcategorized pages (but not en:Goop (company)). I see now that the two cats are connected by en:Category:Alternative medicine. Perhaps the overcategorization check only works on pages that are in two cats that are directly in a parent-child relationship, rather than grandparent-grandchild.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 02:11, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

I also encountered a false positive in the flagging of en:Category:Advocates of pseudoscience, a first-level subcategory of "Category:Pseudoscience" that is not elsewhere in the tree. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 02:08, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

@LaundryPizza03: Strange.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 02:15, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Force cat a lot to appear on certain pages？

can i force it to appear on https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:AllPages&from=%E5%BA%B6&namespace=14 for example? it would be good if it can be used on such pages too. RZuo (talk) 12:37, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

@RZuo: No, but it does appear on Special:PrefixIndex/Category:庶. Please note that the character is used in a bunch of languages per wikt:庶.   — 🇺🇦Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me}🇺🇦 13:40, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Editing "Expand" on English Wikipedia

Could cat-a-lot please be fixed not to cause this mess? Thanks. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 02:20, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

See Commons:Village pump/Technical#Cat-a-lot does not work for categories. The only difference is that there is no Expand page on Commons, so it just hangs here, while it happily edits the article on enwiki. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 22:07, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Cat-a-lot failing

I'm experiencing a lot of failed categorisation with Cat-a-lot this week - it's failing every day. After selecting items to recategorise, it sticks permanently on the "updating page" dialog box. Is there a known issue at the moment? Cnbrb (talk) 12:39, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

same problem. Miikul (talk) 20:16, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Me too. Win7, Firefox. PeterWD (talk) 20:33, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Same on chromium-based mobile browser. It looks like it's particularly struggling with moving categories that have sub-categories. As long as there are no sub-categories it seems to work. Nakonana (talk) 15:04, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Buggy category search in cat-a-lot via mobile browser

When searching for categories via cat-a-lot that are not already in immediate parent-child "vicinity" (like in cases of uncategorized media), one needs to "confirm" one's search result either via kicking "enter" on mobile keyboard or by tapping on the search result to "add" the found category to the cat-a-lot list of categories to choose from. However, neither of the two ways of "confirming" the search result is currently working in (my chromium-based) mobile browser, which means that I need to open every single file individually and add the categories manually. Example: there's media on Skopje in "All media needing categories as of 2019" (let's shorten that here to "All2019"). When opening cat-a-lot on "All2019", cat-a-lot only offers options like "Uncategorized files", "Hidden categories", and "Files needing categories by year". If I enter "Skopje" in the "Enter category name" search box, there's no way for me to actually select or add "Skopje" to the list of categories to choose from. That's the bug. I'm stuck with the options "Uncategorized files", "Hidden categories", and "Files needing categories by year". The only way to get to the Category:Skopje is to manually click through the whole category tree, first moving to some parent of All2019, and from there to a child category that hopefully has Skopje somewhere down the line of the category tree. This is obviously not very feasible, so every file needs to be categorized manually in the end. Nakonana (talk) 15:25, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Actually, it's sounds like the same issue as described in "Cat-a-lot not working for on-screen keyboards", except, it used to work for up until 1-2 months or so ago. Nakonana (talk) 15:29, 2 March 2024 (UTC)