This script, Cat-a-lot, is a JavaScript gadget which can be enabled or disabled in your Preferences. The documentation page is located at Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.

Gadget descriptions:

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eu
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ja
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lang
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Cat-a-lot: A tool that helps with moving multiple files between categories or adding categories to search results. [documentation / talk]

i18n

Gadget translations:

missing or unrecognised i18n type

	SpBot archives all sections tagged with {{Section resolved\|1=~~~~}} after 3 days. For the archive overview, see Special:PrefixIndex/MediaWiki talk:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js/Archive.

ToDo List

Better handling of {{Uncategorized}} template (TFCforever), what exactly?
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
Ability to move categories too (User:Timeshifter). Seems Done - - Docu at 06:03, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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).[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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))[reply]

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

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

some modifications, Hebrew translations.

Hi.

so one of the sysops on hewiki asked me to convert this to work with regular pages instead of just files (we do not use categories for files much in hewiki anyway). while doing so i also added the hebrew i18n.

the modified script is here. the way it is, i did not "add" support for regular cats but rather _replaced_ the support of files with regular pages. i am sure you won't find it too difficult to teach it to work with both.

i tried to keep the diff to a minimum (except the translation part, of course), so it should be fairly easy to just diff these two files to view all my modifications (based on 2.15).

btw: did you consider putting it on some public source site, e.g. github?

some points:

i had to add continuation support in getSubCats().
both getSubCats() and getParentCats() should have titles/cmtitle: this.localCatName + ':' + this.currentCategory rather than 'Category:' + this.currentCategory
the "float:" in css did not do it for us - it creates display problems (esp. with rtl language...). i moved li.append(symbol).append(' ').append(link); _after_ the "Copy..Move" buttons. i think you probably want to do it too.
i also found it advantageous to add to the cat_a_lot_category_list div style "white-space:nowrap;", as it prevents line breakage on long category names (esp. when you type in a new category in the input box - at least in chrome the menu width is sometimes calculated incorrectly in this case). i did it in the code instead of the css, but this is just because i'm not a sysop so i found it easier.

peace, קיפודנחש (talk) 17:29, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

update: so the same sysop asked me to also allow one to choose the subcats for manipulation (i.e., select them like you select regular pages). this of course allows one to create some weird stuff, as in making circular categorization, or make a category a member of itself. i do not worry too much about this, but i *do* worry about the fact that the code got uglier, manly b/c my jQuery-fu is not that high. will be grateful for any useful comment on my talk page or here wrt how to make this functionality less ugly.

peace, קיפודנחש (talk) 02:23, 27 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

Bugs and suggestions

Just used this tool for the first time today. Overall, very impressive, easy to use, and helpful. But...

As others have reported, the tool sometimes hangs when moving or copying multiple files; in fact, it almost always hangs at some point even if only a few files are being moved or copied. When this happens, the modal dialog spinner just spins and spins and spins. There seems to be no way to cancel an operation once started; a cancel option would be a good addition, but fixing the cause of hang-ups would be even better.
If the category names are long enough and there are enough subcategories, it is possible for the popup box in the lower right to completely cover the last file on the page, so that it cannot be selected or deselected, and there is no way to move the popup box. (It is possible to work around this by resizing the browser window, but that is awkward and inconvenient.) How about adding a left-arrow icon which, when clicked, moves the whole box to the lower left (and, of course, changes the left-arrow to a right-arrow so that you can reverse the process)?

Thanks for your contribution! --R'n'B (talk) 14:52, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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:

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Removing instead of moving

In some cases, if the user choose to move files from an existing category to a non-existing category, Cat-a-lot only removes files from the old category and doesn't add the new category (without report any error). --ŠJů (talk) 15:43, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I love it, but I have a suggestion for improvement... 2

Currently Cat-a-lot is limited to categories. Why not extend it to picture galleries?
In commons, biology, all the pictures of species included in a species gallery should/can be in the species category with the same name.
Example: If you look at Percina kathae, the image should/can be put also in the species category Category:Percina kathae. Currently the image is in the genus category Category:Percina which is very bad (there are a lot of images in Category:Percina as if these images were from unidentified species.
In a category, you propose "Remove from this category" which is excellent. But you could also propose Remove for all the categories.
Example:

Current cat-a-lot
cat-a-lot with new 'Remove' link
We could even remove "Remove from this lib"

So from Category:Percina kathae, we would be able to remove Category:Percina from all pictures in Category:Percina kathae.
Best best regards Liné1 (talk) 15:14, 23 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea and maybe extend it to user contributions too for those users that put a million of tags on their images. --Foroa (talk) 15:37, 23 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Or just users that upload a bunch of related uncategorized files which you want to add to a category. Nemo 17:51, 26 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Use VisualFileChange to add any Wikitext to uploads of one user or files in one category or perform replacements. -- RE rillke questions? 11:01, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Case 2 (removing files that are in one category from a second category) is really the only case in which I constantly want to use this tool. Is there any way to do this? --Julian H. (talk/files) 09:18, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For galleries

Would it be possible to make it available for galleries? For logs in gallery form like User:OgreBot/Watercraft this could most helpful. -- Docu at 07:09, 12 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Misalignments

I use cat-a-lot and often I got bad surprise: my photos are moved to the wrong category. It is due to misalignments of the category names and "Copy Move" messages in the box: they are not on the same lines, and often the "Copy Move" concerns the category displayed one line above (or below). I have to count up or down the lines from one end to guess the good category. Thanks, Jack ma (talk) 08:49, 12 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I guess your category names are just too long ;)

More seriously: it happens occasionally: a workaround is to click on a category above or below and then select the target category from there. -- Docu at 10:18, 12 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Misalignments in the box are really a source of hesitation before clicking, to avoid correcting back if moved/copied to the wrong category. And there is no tooltip to help. In the image on the right, there are 5 lines and 4 links. I just know that the 2 last links concern the 2 last lines. So which one for "Buildings in Charente" (the first line) ? Is there any hint I missed ? It seems, surprisingly, to concern nobody else than me, but I think choosing the correct link should be the key point in cat-a-lot. Jack ma (talk) 08:06, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I added some orange lines.

Please purge your browser’s cache or enable JavaScript in your Browser's settings. (You only need to do it once.)

Operating system Browser	Microsoft Windows or Linux	macOS
Internet Explorer	Press `Ctrl`+`F5`
Mozilla Firefox	Hold down `⇧ Shift` while clicking Reload (or press `Ctrl`+`F5` or `Ctrl`+`⇧ Shift`+`R`)	Press `⌘ Cmd`+`R` (reload page) or `⌘ Cmd`+`⇧ Shift`+`R` (reload page and rewrite cache)
Opera	Press `Ctrl`+`F5` or `⇧ Shift`+`F5`
Konqueror	Press `Ctrl`+`F5` or `⇧ Shift`+`F5`
Apple Safari	Hold down `⇧ Shift`+`Alt` while clicking Reload
Apple Safari	Press `Ctrl`+`R`	Press `⌘ Cmd`+`⌥ Option`+`E` (clear browser cache) or `⌘ Cmd`+`R` (update)
Chrome	Press `Ctrl`+`F5` or `⇧ Shift`+`F5` or hold down `⇧ Shift` while clicking Reload	Press `⌘ Cmd`+`F5` or `⇧ Shift`+`F5` or hold down `⇧ Shift` while clicking Reload

Does it look better now? If not, which browser are you using? Thank you. -- RE rillke questions? 08:55, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks for the improvement (orange lines). Unfortunately, the problem still remains (see image); the two last lines are even shifted down. I use Windows XP and Firefox 3.0.5 (and don't want to upgrade because everything else works fine). Jack ma (talk) 08:19, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. This looks odd. Firefox 3.0.5 is out of support. I am on WinXP, too and have the latest firefox. Some Add-Ons (if you have them) might stop working but the majority of them can be updated. Unfortunately, I have no FF3.0.5 so I can't test. -- RE rillke questions? 09:39, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

For me, with FF11 it looks like this. -- RE rillke questions? 09:52, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you correct the thing, ok, otherwise not a big problem. I just have to do care by counting the lines. E.g. in this other example, 3 first lines on the right concern the 3 first lines on the left (till the horizontal arrow which is the current category), then all other lines are shifted down by 1 line. (I tried in English, same result; apparently not a problem with line wrapping). Thanks anyway, Jack ma (talk) 10:21, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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)[reply]

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

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

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Invisible characters in Category names

I do not know where they come from, but only by cutting and pasting I sometimes manage to add categories with invisible characters to files, which are not handled properly by Cat-a-lot. For example File:Colima - Anthropomorphic Tubular Duct Flute - Walters TL200920138 - Three Quarter.jpg is in Category:Archeological sites in Colima, but the string "Category:Archeological sites in Colima" ends with invisible a character #26 for some reason, which is ignored by most of the software. However, Cat-a-lot can not remove that category or move that file. Would it be possible to tweak the script to ignore it as well?--Jarekt (talk) 20:23, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The invisible character in your example is U+200E. Since it causes problems, I can add a fix for it within my bot script. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 21:25, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the fix of this example. I was hoping for changes to Cat-a-lot so invisible characters would be stripped from the category names, before they are added to the files. --Jarekt (talk) 19:03, 18 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The bug continues. File pages containing unvisible control characters in the category link are displayed in the category but Cat-a-lot is not able to remove them from the category. (Btw., HotCat is able to handle such pages.) --ŠJů (talk) 14:34, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

Speed cap?

When using Cat-a-Lot editors can get very high edit rates. 200 edits in 30 seconds is plausible (I'm not sure what the maximum possible is I haven't timed). If the user is doing a big batch, they might well use it for several thousand files.

Given that bots are normally restricted to lower speeds, it seems odd that this script allows humans to work semi-automatically at faster speeds. Especially when edits with Cat-a-Lot are not bot tagged, and are not minor edits, and so have potential to things like flood watchlists.

I don't want to restrict the tool's utility, but the above is odd. A possible solution could be put a speed cap on, but if being run on a bot-flagged account allow higher speeds and mark the edits as bot edits.--Nilfanion (talk) 10:02, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Currently it is violating mw:API:Etiquette (because it sends all requests the same time and also queries each single file while more than one could be queried with one request). I think, I'll make it using MediaWiki:Gadget-libAPI.js which will limit the number of simultaneous requests and also has a cleverer error-handling, especially for anonymous users or users with rate limits. After I did so, it will behave like VisualFileChange (regarding to editing), which is I think a good compromise. This, of course will add additional dependencies and other Wikis using this gadget will have to import all of them. -- Rillke^(q?) 10:47, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I hope that doesn't result in some sort of speed cap. I can appreciate that when you hit enter to move over 100 images from one category to another the actual processing can take an irritatingly long time, but what possible benefit could there be in slowing that down? The person using catalot isn't going to be doing anything else if you slow the process, or at least not online, though I sometimes start a catalot run and go off and make a cup of tea. If you have concerns about people misusing catalot then slowing it down would just waste people's time, surely a better option would be to take the tool away from those who misuse it? WereSpielChequers (talk) 23:44, 14 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps if this is a real issue (has it created any issues that someone can point to?) then this could be a user flag so that large (over 100 images in a batch?) and high speed changes are limited to users flagged as trusted to do this work while unflagged have reasonable speed limitations on the assumption that they probably only want to change less than 100 images at a time? --Fæ (talk) 09:24, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we could apply different defaults to different user groups for the number of simultaneous requests. -- Rillke^(q?) 09:38, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it is a real issue, I suspect it is the answer to this bug report and one I received at the London Meetup. I'm pretty sure that there is a whitelisting process on Commons, and so one solution would be to tell people who hit this problem to apply for whitelisting. WereSpielChequers (talk) 13:51, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

White lists and restrictions for JavaScript applications are simply stupid since it runs at the client side and can be easily bypassed. Setting reasonable defaults is enough. There is a white list for AWB but I am not inclined consulting this one. -- Rillke^(q?) 16:13, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Since your reply indent leads me to the conclusion that you're answering to my comment: My goal will be preventing sending 200 simultaneous requests to the API. I will let it to the user how many s(he) allows sending at once (a preference) so no one will be able to complain when you are blocked from editing through the API due to a violation of mw:API:Etiquette. Having only 4 requests at once (what I used as a default for VisualFileChange) won't slow down the process a lot; at least for smaller batches. But it will help reducing the database replication lag and the bad impact of it to other editors. If you want to move most files from cat containing a huge number of files to another, you may use {{Move}}. If you want to change multiple categories at once, replacing templates, … VisualFileChange is the better choice anyway. -- Rillke^(q?) 09:38, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe, it sounds like a techincal change will address the issue without compromising too much. I don't really get on with VFC, it seems more reliable and quicker for me to write a bit of Python than puzzle over how to do what I want with VFC (which is rather slow, but this might be my macmini). Cat-a-lot, however, seems easier for simple jobs, even largish re-cats. I guess I am a 'sophisticated user' so if I struggle with VFC, I am not sure that telling less experienced users that Cat-a-lot sucks and forcing them to use VFC would be a good solution for everyone. --Fæ (talk) 14:29, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You made a lot of words but didn't tell what confused you so much. I don't force anyone to change. I just said it's more flexible than Cat-A-Lot (because you have direct access to the WikiMarkup through option custom replace). But this discussion does not belong here at all; just wanted to give a "preview" how the editing-speed of the tool will change and that, in case you plan to do something more sophisticated, it could be beneficial using VisualFileChange. -- Rillke^(q?) 16:13, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rillke, forgive my ignorance but I don't understand all the jargon in this thread. Is Cat a Lot going to change so that I can only change the categories of 4 files at a time, or will I still be able to select all and recategorise scores of images - though a bit more slowly than at present? WereSpielChequers (talk) 22:58, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You will be able to use it as you could use it before. It is just internal stuff that happens behind the scenes in your browser. For larger categories, it will be slightly slower, especially the edit-time-pattern will change (currently there is a long lag and then the counter rises, then it will be more balanced). -- Rillke^(q?) 23:11, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Rillke, that's very reassuring. WereSpielChequers (talk) 09:07, 16 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Fail unsafe

Hi, Cat a Lot isn't working at the moment, I can appreciate that sometimes even computers need to take a rest. But it is somewhat frustrating that you only realise that it hasn't worked when you actually look at your contributions, and discover that all the time you've spent selecting images and moving them to other categories has not actually resulted in any edits. Can you at least make it come up with a message that it isn't working rather than slowly bring up the dialogue box, allow you to select loads of images and then tell you it has moved them without actually doing so? WereSpielChequers (talk) 21:55, 23 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This behaviour of Cat-a-lot is very unfortunate. Was this (particular move/copy action) a one-time error or can you reproduce it? Thanks in advance. -- Rillke^(q?) 16:32, 24 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rillke, I was getting that problem for an hour or two, but it has gone away now. I should have checked on my netbook to see if it was replicated there on a different PC and O/S, will do that next time I get such a glitch. Cheers WereSpielChequers (talk) 17:36, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Problems in Monobook

Firstly I use monobook- I have custom.js that I use but have not copied over and suspect this might be causing a conflict.

On a new computer or after I have reset my preferences- cat-a-lot works. I click the button, up it comes, I do the changes and the changes register. The second time I go to use it I press the button and no-action happens. No popup appears. So I change the skin to Vector- and it works once more, and again and again. I reset to monobook- and once more it works but just once. --ClemRutter (talk) 00:09, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

collapsing box for selecting

Hi, I am working a bit more with cat-a-lot now, and one of the things I struggle with is that the box of cat-a-lot if above the pictures. If you are on a cat with a lot of sub-cats you can't select the right-most column of pictures. If you collapse the box by clicking on cat-a-lot, the selecting is switched off, so you can't select. Is it possible to create a way to collapse the box, while cat-a-lot stays active? Akoopal (talk) 11:55, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

AFAIK, you can change the size of the Cat-A-Lot-Box. Hover the topmost border, and the cursor changes to the change-size-vertically icon, and then click and drag the size. -- Rillke^(q?) 13:08, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ahh, that already helps. Thanks! However I still think it makes sense to collapse the box, so you see everything, select what you want, and then expand and select the copy or move you want. Akoopal (talk) 17:27, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Akoopal that collapsing would be nice but, I imagine, fiddly to implement. Knowing that the size can be changed by dragging is very helpful, though. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:00, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Does Cat-a-lot always remove {{Uncategorized}}?

Is there any possibility of Cat-a-lot asking for permission to do this, or making it optional? HotCat asks the user's permission, which is occasionally very useful. --moogsi (blah) 10:49, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bugs

1) Please make it possible to remove from a category. This would be super helpful for maintaining bot upload dumpgrounds such as Category:Rain. Admins can circumvent this by moving selected files to an unexisting category, then setting CommonsDelinker to empty that cat, but a) CommonsDelinker has enough work already and editing its job list is unwieldy due to the time it takes to load the page just once b) this method doubles the number of new revisions, i.e. creates unnecessary clutter.

2) In case of categories with numerous subcats (such as Category:Close-ups of flowers) Cat-a-lot doesn't list nearly all subcats, forcing manual input in case of subcats down in the alphabetic order. In this category's case, only 52 subcats out of +70.

3) Cat-a-lot refuses to move files that have spaces in their filename, the error message says "The following pages were skipped, because the old category could not be found:" Case in point, Category:Close-ups of plants, files including the following:

File:2012-11-16 14-08-53-gouttes-eau.jpg
File:2012-11-16 14-10-55-gouttes-eau.jpg
File:2012-11-16 14-11-51-gouttes-eau.jpg
File:2012-11-16 14-17-28-gouttes-eau.jpg
File:2012-11-16 14-15-32-gouttes-eau.jpg
File:2012-11-16 14-15-50-gouttes-eau.jpg
File:2012-11-16 14-18-11-gouttes-eau.jpg
File:2012-11-16 14-19-04-gouttes-eau.jpg

--Pitke (talk) 14:43, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Concerning #2, there is a pref in cat-a-lot allowing you to increase the number up to 500. Of course a load-on-demand-technique should be developed.-- Rillke^(q?) 20:11, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Any idea why ...

Any idea why cat-a-lot cannot move or remove categories from the items in Category:Buildings and structures in Valletta ? --Foroa (talk) 10:46, 7 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The wikitexts of the category members contains a character with char code 8206 (a en:Left-to-right mark) between the last letter and the first closing bracket: [[Category:Buildings and structures in Valletta→‎←]]. Cat-A-Lot does not consider it as whitespace but MediaWiki does. This has to be fixed in Cat-A-Lot. -- Rillke^(q?) 11:22, 7 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You might want to take a look at the regexps HotCat uses to get around this problem. Lupo 11:57, 7 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

SieBot seems to be able to handle that. And again in Category:Buildings and structures in Barcelona, probably same author. --Foroa (talk) 12:05, 10 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

Feature request: Invert selection

An "Invert selection" option would be useful, please. Bonus points if it works after an operation; for example, select all the files in a category about men, and move them to the relevant sub-category; then invert the selection, and move the rest to the sub-category about women. Andy Mabbett (talk) 22:25, 16 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

One of the DUMBEST tools here

Whoever made it not only made it complicated but also somewhat retarded, it doesn't do what you tell it to do...I tried using it but everytime it messes it up...why can't it just MOVE all the pics I selected to the category I selected instead of mucking around and moving it to some SUB-CATEGORY which I do not care about?...they should rename it to Cat-everything-except-what-you-want.js.....--Stemoc (talk) 04:13, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,

I suggest:

Avoiding as much as possible to be mean to whoever was involved in this tool.
Describing clearly the problem you face and how to reproduce it − see good advice at mw:How to report a bug.

For your information, I have been using Cat-a-lot for the past 3 years without any problem at all. So being a little more specific might help here.

Cheers, Jean-Fred (talk) 14:27, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You can see my recent contribution, I went to this category, (Category:Vampire Diaries Panel at the 2011 Comic-Con International), i ran cat-a-lot I typed the name "Julie Plec" for her category and then i selected 32 images there which had Julie Plec in them, but there was no option to move those images i selected to her category, i figured i may have read it wrong because, honestly its confusing the way it written and instead of "copying" it to Julie Plec's category, it coped it to one of the cats on that page)..so yes, its a dumb tool, how hard would it be to select pics and then add it to the category OF YOUR CHOICE, not the one the script chooses for you?...--Stemoc (talk) 14:43, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just enter "Julie Plec" in the text field of the gadget and press enter. Also, read the help page. — Julian H.^✈(talk/files) 14:57, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Didn't work the last time i tried, i pushed enter a few times adn it refused to give me a "Julie Plec" category.....it worked now...what went wrong then?--Stemoc (talk) 15:07, 24 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's why, when something doesn't do what it should, I like to give up for now and try again hours later. If it works, this method does not tell me whether the tool was temporarily dumb or I was, but if again it doesn't, it gives me more confidence when I complain. Jim.henderson (talk) 13:41, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Selecting of more than one file

In Firefox it's necessary to select more than one file with Strg+Click. The selcting is working okay, but simultan with the click the selected images are opened in a separate TAB. Are there a possibilty with an other key combination or an other way? thx in advance --K@rl (talk) 19:34, 30 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Normally, left-clicking on the file size info under each image should work to select images. I tried it with Firefox and it worked. — Julian H.^✈(talk/files) 20:05, 30 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's true, it works, but simultan the selcted image will be opened in a separate TAB. All thesse must be closed after finishing categorizing ;-) --K@rl (talk) 15:32, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can't confirm that, nothing is opened in Firefox/Chrome. — Julian H.^✈(talk/files) 15:36, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's really crazy, because I can not show this phanomen. All its okay, if I select all files, also only one - but how can you select two files to categorize in one step? --K@rl (talk) 16:26, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

PS: Nachdem ich sehe, dass du ja deutsch Muttersprachler bist, beschreibe ich es nochmals auf deutsch - englisch ist leider nicht das meine. Zum Thema: Normalerweise kannst du bei FF mit Strg und Click auf einen Link diesen in einem neuen Tab öffnen. Dieser Vorgang findet auch im Cat-a-lot gleichzeitig mit dem Markieren eines Bildtitels statt. Das heißt der Vorgang der im FF standardmäßig statfindet wird nicht ausgeschaltet. --K@rl (talk) 16:30, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Du musst ja nicht auf einen Link klicken, sondern kannst auch irgendwo in die freie Fläche z.B. oberhalb oder unterhalb des Bildes klicken. -- Rillke^(q?) 16:40, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, danke gewonnen - es funkt so, sorry für die ..Frage ;-) --gruß K@rl (talk) 15:23, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

OK, here are a few:

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.
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
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)[reply]

all / all media / all categories / none

Currently it's only possible to select "all" or "none". "all" is either "all files" or "everything" depending on preferences. For Commons, it can be helpful to be able to select just "all categories" or "all files". For the later, without going through all the changes. -- Docu at 07:59, 14 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Select first item (e.g. category), hold down ⇧ Shift and select the end item. This is nearly as quick as pressing a link. Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot#Moving files between categories, and removing files from a category -- Rillke^(q?) 10:43, 14 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for pointing out the workaround. For categories this works, but for search results it's a bit more tricky.

Changing "all | none" to "all | media | categories | none" wouldn't use up much of the GUI. -- Docu at 14:15, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Removing category problems

Hi, I've had this problem a couple of times recently:

Create a new category, use catalot tool to add same to a list of files.

Attempt to remove a (now-superfluous) parent of the new cat from the same list (ie, files in the new subcat)

Tool instead removes all files in the list from the new cat! Very frustrating!

See, forex revision history of such a file. This happened twice in one day, as I was categorizing a huge file-dump from Flickr that was poorly-categorized. I was careful the second time to RTFM carefully before attempting the removal. Help? TIA, Pete Tillman (talk) 18:48, 22 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Cat-a-lot doesn't understand a category with diacritics?

Cat-a-lot refused to move some files, perhaps the problem is with diacritics in the original category name? Images whee to be moved from Category:Osiedle Tysiąclecia (Katowice) to Category:Church of St. Mary of Piekary Śląskie in Katowice. Done! All pages are processed. Return to page The following pages were skipped, because the old category could not be found: File:Katowice July 2013 008.JPG File:Katowice July 2013 010.JPG File:Katowice July 2013 007.JPG File:Katowice July 2013 009.JPG File:Katowice July 2013 013.JPG File:Katowice July 2013 011.JPG

Similarly, image File:Katowice July 2013 017.JPG couldn't be moved to Category:Rondo Sławika w Katowicach‎.

Interestingly, Cat-a-lot was able to move images into the Category:Osiedle Tysiąclecia (Katowice) category yesterday so unless something was changed in the last 24h or so, the problem is with the part of the script that tries to find a category that needs to be moved from. Please ping me when this is fixed so I can move the listed images (or just tell me it was done). Cheers, --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 15:21, 4 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Load in categories only

As far as I can remember, this gadget only works from categories. However, according to mw.loader.inspect() it added 21.3 KB to JavaScript payload on a random file description page (third biggest for me, after HotCat and AjaxQuickDelete). I will always love cat-a-lot nevertheless, but maybe someone will see this and find an easy enhancement. --Nemo 09:08, 19 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Conditional loading by page name or namespace is not supported by the current implementation of gadgets in MediaWiki. -- Rillke^(q?) 09:19, 19 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What is happen with Cat-a-lot?

Hi at all. Every now and then Cat-a-lot does not work. The moment I give the order to move the files to the correct subcategory that appears on the right, he declares that it is not possible because "the following pages were skipped, because the old category could not be found". This is absurd. Cat-a-lot does not execute the movements because it denies the existence of the category of departure, where the files are located, and from which instead should leave. Why? Usually Cat-a-lot work for me, but then suddenly no longer works, then it works again after an hour, or maybe the next day. It's very boring. Because if I change my pc it is the same thing. What's going on? What crashes? It is just my problem, or Cat-a-lot is malfunctioning for all? Thanks for the answers, tips, solutions. Best regards, --DenghiùComm (talk) 16:40, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Check if the files are categorized through templates (rather than explicit [[Category:FooBar]] wiki code). --Dschwen (talk) 23:18, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, this is not the matter. To move the files into the correct category I was finally forced to move them individually with HotCat. --DenghiùComm (talk) 00:33, 22 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

[copied from the discussion in the Village Pump] Assuming you are trying to move from an existing category, I think this happens because the file has already been moved to another category and no longer is a member of the source category; if you are trying to move a file to more than one category, you should copy to the first, then move to the second. If you refresh the category view between Catalot runs, those images which have been moved no longer appear. I haven't had any problems with this, and hope that helps. Rodhullandemu (talk) 17:11, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I know exactly how it works Cat-a-lot. If the files are moved, it is obvious that it do not accept again a move request, even if the pictures still appear. The fact is that the files are really in the category, and when Cat-a-lot goes crazy I can only move them individually using HotCat. It's a big waste of time. This evening it happens that Cat-a-lot works for copying; when I request to move 5 files (tree of this statue and two of this other statue) the tool moved me only the files of Apollo, not that of Artemis; for these last two files I must use HotCat. It's very strange! A mystery! --DenghiùComm (talk) 00:49, 22 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe there was something odd about the syntax? I would suggest that the category might have been added by a template, but if that were the case I shouldn't think HotCat could do anything about it either ... —SamB (talk) 05:12, 22 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I believe I have answered the question here... TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 06:55, 22 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If there are invisible characters put in the category name by FrescoBot, then I cannot do anything. But I look to the chronology of these files of Artemis, and I see that FrescoBot doesn't touch them. So the mystery still stay there. If it is a problem of cache (did I understand correctly TeleComNasSprVen?), I will try next time to clean it when Cat-a-lot will be crazy again, in the hope that after it will works correctly. Thank you very much at all for your answer! Cheers, --DenghiùComm (talk) 08:22, 22 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, FrescoBot is trying to remove the characters in order for Cat-a-lot to work. I contacted BasilicoFresco, the maintainer of FrescoBot, on the English Wikipedia and he's assured me he will restart the bot's jobs. Maybe later the bot will get around to removing the characters from the files. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 10:32, 22 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think what you have suggested doing, cleaning cache, definitely helps in this case. But I think Commons needs a more efficient way to solve this problem than relying on the bot, when the bot owner goes on WikiBreak. TeleComNasSprVen (talk) 10:34, 22 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

YES ! SO IT WORKS !!! Thank you so much TeleComNasSprVen ! When Cat-a-lot became crazy and doesn't ricognize the files, it's necessary to clean the cache. After it works. Fine! Wonderful! Thank you very much again ! Cheers, --DenghiùComm (talk) 11:34, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Navigate to category page

When using cat-a-lot, I would like to be able to easily navigate, in a new tab, to the category page of one of the categories listed in the tree. I'd expect center-click on the mouse to do this, as it does with other wikilinks. This does not currently seem possible. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 03:22, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Process custom list with cat-a-lot

Cat-a-lot only seems to be available on search and category pages. I generate image lists with Catscan2 that I would like to then process with cat-a-lot. I can put them in a wikitable and save them to a page, but cat-a-lot doesn't appear. What can I add to the page to make this happen? I can probably figure out how to mimic the exact HTML that such pages use and plug my images into it, but I'm hoping there's a less complex way. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 03:27, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Cat-a-lot isn't able to do that. If you enclose your list in <gallery> tags and save the page in your user namespace, you can process it using VisualFileChange (action custom replace or the like or append text, it's a mass editing tool, not dedicated for categories). -- Rillke^(q?) 10:52, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

New categories don't show up

Example of endless Loading... message for Cat-a-lot discussion

If I create a new category, and try to apply it to an image in a Category page using cat-a-lot, when I type the first couple of letters to bring up the drop-down list, the new category does not appear. I assume this is some kind of caching issue, and the new categories eventually will appear?

If I continue to type the complete category name and press ↵ Enter, it just says Loading... forever, and never displays the "tree" with the Copy/Move links. It seems to only do this for categories that are not, themselves, a member of any category. For example, Category:Sandbox3 is in Category:Sandbox4, which is in Category:Sandbox5, which is in no category. Sandbox3 or Sandbox4, when typed in the text field, immediately return the tree after pressing ↵ Enter. With Sandbox5, though, it just says Loading...

Workaround: I just realized that, if you press ↵ Enter twice in succession, it solves the problem, so I suppose that's a workaround that we can document if this behavior remains. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 01:57, 7 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

Add Category to Multiple images

You say "Turn on the gadget: after activation, you will see a little post-it-note labeled "cat-a-lot" in the lower-right corner of every category page. " Yet you do not say how to turn on the gadget. No post-it-note is visible, so I'm at a loss. All I want to di is add a Category to all my uploads. Many thanks. Wici Rhuthun 1 (talk) 10:21, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to category pages, it should also show up on a search results page, try this one. Junkyardsparkle (talk) 07:42, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Cryptic error msg

When I want to move files from one category (the visible one I am working from) to another one, Cat-a-lot refuses to do so with "The following pages were skipped, because the old category could not be found:" — I cannot understand what this message will tell me. What is the old category? Can be nothing than the category just displayed. Cache refresh doesn't help. sarang♥사랑 17:46, 8 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Now I see: I moved with Cat-a-lot into a category "xxxx (yyy)". This worked well. But when I try to remove from this category I get the error msg. I am out of my wits what to do now. I am not amused from the imagination to remove more than 170 files with Hotcat, one by one. Has anyone a better idea? sarang♥사랑 11:49, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Sarang: If you haven't solved the problem yet, point out the category you mean. --Junkyardsparkle (talk) 23:18, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

unnecessary message box

Is it possible to suppress the message box when the script did all the changes for the selected files? In my opinion this message is unnecessary because every file is tagged with its own status.[6] --Olei (talk) 20:45, 22 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Even making it easier to dismiss, with the ESC key for instance, would be an improvement.--jnkyrdsprkl (talk) 21:28, 22 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

Request for custom edit summary in Cat-a-lot

I love this gadget but I would really appreciate the possibility to add edit summaries while using it. Would it be possible to add a user-customised edit summary to this tool? - Takeaway (talk) 00:14, 25 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I also would be pleased with a simple way to tell all watchers why I moved a particular bunch of files. Not in as many words as an ordinary edit summary allows, however. Jim.henderson (talk) 14:50, 26 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sorting in searches

One of the most brilliant uses I had for cat-a-lot was doing a search and putting the results in a category. This appears to have broken since the new search options were released. Can it be patched please? --Fæ (talk) 05:25, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Removed from category $1

When you remove items from a category, it displays "Removed from category $1" in the category page. -mattbuck (Talk) 08:12, 15 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Link to Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot

Could a link to Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot be added to the cat-a-lot dropdown. While I am using it I sometimes need help on figuring out something. Especially if it is something I haven't tried yet. Or if I have been away from editing with cat-a-lot for awhile. --Timeshifter (talk) 07:50, 29 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Undo mistake?

I've done shit, is there an easy option (function) to undo or repair an done operation (70 files)?? ↔ User: Perhelion (Commons: = crap?) 19:08, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think this will require either individual edits with HotCat, or a batch edit with VisualChange, which is complex. Is this the set of changes you're trying to undo? If so, someone with VisualChange experience can try and rewrite the categories by putting them in a temporary sandbox gallery and doing a replacement on them. (A mistake in VisualChange can cause more trouble than Cat-a-lot though.) --Closeapple (talk) 22:15, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If that's the edits, an admin can also roll them back and Perhelion can then re-categorize them correctly. But for that, we'd need to know which edits to roll back exactly. Lupo 22:41, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've rolled back the 117! edits pointed out by Closeapple because most of them were obviously wrong. This has done the job on the contribs page with the erroneous edits (thanks for sorting them out, closeapple!):

$rollBackLinks = jQuery.makeArray( $('.mw-rollback-link a') );
var rollback = function() {
  $.get( $( $rollBackLinks.pop() ).attr('href') ).done( rollback );
};

@Lupo: Do we have a new administration/ curation tool for mass rolling back edits? -- Rillke^(q?) 23:21, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot and sorry (I was not aware of my huge edit, the most files in this Category:Black and white are wrong, so around 1000)! The real Cat should be simple Category:Black and white photographs (which should have no subcat). ↔ User: Perhelion (Commons: = crap?) 23:51, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Rillke: Not that I know of. Might be handy, though. I would just have used the low-tech approach: click 117 times (open in new tab). Lupo 05:46, 12 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Perhelion himself is a rollbacker and consequently would be able to do the same. -- Rillke^(q?) 09:50, 12 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Rillke: the function is not working anymore? Maybe there is now an API-Request needed? (I've done this now with window.open, but the loop maximum is 20 ^^) ↔ User: Perhelion 06:47, 30 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Cat-a-lot at the gallery pages

I often create lists of files that need something put <gallery></gallery> around them, place it somewhere like User:Jarekt/a and do some operations on them, like add {{No license}} template, etc. It would be great if I can use Cat-a-lot to classify images in such a group, or with any collection of images displayed on a page using <gallery></gallery> or other means. Is it possible? --Jarekt (talk) 13:17, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In the searchbox, if you place Enter the destination cat-name instead of Enter category name, it will give quick understanding of the first step of this tool. --THAuzhavan (talk) 07:12, 13 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Filter out invisible LTR marks

Hi! I noticed that very often Cat-a-lot users insert the invisible character U+200E (LTR mark) at the end of the category name, just before the closing double brackets. You can use this tool to actually see the invisible character or the backspace to "feel" it. Some examples: [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] These LTR marks come from cut-and-pasting a subcategory name from a category. Is it possible to filter out this invisible character every time a user insert it? Thanks in advance! -- Basilicofresco (msg) 13:09, 17 January 2015 (UTC) See also MediaWiki talk:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js#Invisible characters in Category_names. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 08:26, 18 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

English Wikipedia

I wonder, could this be made available for use on the English Wikipedia? Autoconfirmed users have had the ability to move categories for months now, but there is no good way to clean-up after a category move. One is required to do all the work manually. Cat-a-lot could easily remedy this situation, and would be of great use. RGloucester (talk) 17:38, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That would be up to wikipedia community. You would need to first ask for approval there and then check with the maintainers here if they will be willing to customize and maintain the code on the wikipedia. Alternatively you could try to find English Wikipedia users familiar with JavaScript who would be willing to adopt it. --Jarekt (talk) 18:58, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Weird glitch with files that refuse to be moved/relocated.

Not sure what's going on here. I tried moving Category:Clothing designed by Max Azria for Fall-Winter 2010 (171 F) to Category:Clothing designed by Max Azria for Fall-Winter 2010 (removing the file count that accidentally got pasted into the original file name) and there are 114 files in the original category that REFUSE to be moved by Cat-a-Lot, can't be removed from the category, etc - despite already being in the renamed category. I was able to copy them into the renamed category though. I fixed one manually by directly editing it to remove the ghost category but it doesn't seem to be removable otherwise. What did I do to cause the glitch? Mabalu (talk) 09:18, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

action query format json prop categories titles Category:Clothing designed by Max Azria for Fall-Winter 2010 (171 F) {"query":{"pages":{"39701062":{"pageid":39701062,"ns":14,"title":"Category:Clothing designed by Max Azria for Fall-Winter 2010 (171 F)"}}}} TypeError: cats is undefined https://bits.wikimedia.org/commons.wikimedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki&only=scripts&skin=vector&version=20150416T192716Z line 4 > eval Line 329 action query cmlimit 50 cmtitle Category:Clothing designed by Max Azria for Fall-Winter 2010 (171 F) cmtype subcat format json list categorymembers {"query":{"categorymembers":[]}} -- Rillke^(q?) 12:57, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry I don't understand? Mabalu (talk) 13:19, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

overview

I have only recently come across the work of this bot, and because of its use can I ask if there is any overseer system. Who decided other than the editor who started the process! that an image needs to be moved from one category into another. I am specificially speaking about my continuing experience on the following files - [13] and [14]. Thanks Edmund Patrick ( ^confer _work) 05:59, 30 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Edmund Patrick: This is not a bot; it is a script and you are right; the script is tied to the one who makes use of it who solely decides what to do with it and is consequently responsible for that. Therefore, I suggest you talk to Mabalu. If one finds non-constructive edits that do not look like accidents, one may report them to COM:AN/V. -- Rillke^(q?) 08:27, 30 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Rillke: thanks still in discussion with Mabalu, yours, Edmund Patrick ( ^confer _work) 05:42, 1 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Minimize window

Would it be possible to add inside the Cat-a-lot window the possibility to minimize it during its use? The window interfere sometimes with the pictures underneath that can't be accessed. This function could improve this already useful tool. --Djiboun (talk) 15:29, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Although not as convenient as requested, but you can drag the top frame and shrink the cat-a-lot overlay "window". -- Rillke^(q?) 18:30, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Rillke, this will be fine.--Djiboun (talk) 05:44, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Return to page

Dear programmer, is it possible to make the message Done! all pages processed, Return to page, to make the return to page that needs to be clicked to continue, so that pressing enter will do the same, so there is no need to go there with the mouse pointer? Regards, Alfvanbeem (talk) 20:28, 2 June 2015 (UTC) PS thanks for this GREAT tool![reply]

Cat-a-lot for Wikipedia

It seems as if Cat-a-lot is only usable for Wikimedia Commons. However I recently saw a user copy categories using it: w:Special:Contributions/Ser Amantio di Nicolao

So now my question is: how do you use Cat-a-lot for moving article-cats within Wikipedia?
In the case that the code / program is just available to few selected users (because of how easy it is to cause large havoc with it) I think it would be a good idea to add some info about it to this page (especially as the edit-descriptions link here) and think about ways to allow more users to take advantage of it, by either:

also programming a "cat-a-lot-vandalism reverter" that easily undoes a (large) cat-a-lot action if that's not possible via other tools. Also some tool that shows all cat-a-lot actions would be useful - probably via a cat-a-lot "tag". Additionally there could be requirements like "autoconfirmed" which would drastically reduce the amount of trolls/vandals misusing the tool.
or establishing some "request for copy/move"-system that either:
- allows users to get a permission (with that I mean a permission by technical means) for the specific action they intend to do (and whose reasonableness they have to explain here) [this would probably require a change to Wikipedia itself]
- or would be executed by more trusted users who have access to the code/program

But maybe that's not even the reason why I can't use it for Wikipedia?

--Fixuture (talk) 19:09, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Fixuture: For the enwiki version, the script is here. Epic Genius (talk) 01:33, 26 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not working

Cat-a-lot is not working for me over at the English Wikipedia. It opens, and I can get as far as selecting articles to move/copy over. But when I try to, nothing happens. It's not a computer problem, as I've had the issue on two separate computers now. Nor is it a browser issue. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 01:40, 26 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I, too, am having a problem. I accidentally added the category "Bologna Pride 2014" to ~300 images that I transferred to Commons using Flickr2Commons. However, I am having difficulty moving the images to their proper category "Bologna Pride 2015" using Cat-a-lot. ALL of the images, except for the first one, need to be moved, but for now I can only do this manually. -Another Believer (talk) 17:20, 1 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not working

The tool is not working now. It gets stuck at the text "Editing page 1 of 21" ("Editing page 1 of 2" etc.). --ŠJů (talk) 15:30, 7 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Rillke: Something for you to fix, same problem as in other gadgets. --Denniss (talk) 15:57, 7 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for reporting. Should be back to work. -- Rillke^(q?) 21:28, 7 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, working now. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:39, 8 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Change default preference

Hi, is it possible to set the preference “Alloy categorising pages (including categories) that are not files” by default? This way the gadget could be used on other wikis with no images only by importing this gadget directly, not modifying it locally, that can be difficult.--Syum90 (talk) 10:52, 11 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Syum90: Changing this would probably result in many miscategorisations here on Commons by people who expected the gadget to only touch files. Replacing the false with a true at name: 'editpages' shouldn't be difficult (unless more adaptations are required to change this) … FDMS 4 17:10, 11 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Would it be possible to make this switchable by a variable, so when you import the script you can set the variable to change the behaviour and you don't have to further maintain the script locally. Akoopal (talk) 06:42, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@FDMS4 and Akoopal: Thank you for your ideas; well, the ideal would be to import directly because we would always have the gadget updated, but if will cause problems here on Commons we will have to modify the code locally and to update it periodically.--Syum90 (talk) 08:33, 12 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Verify before leaving page

@DieBuche, Rillke: it would be nice if the Gadget could add a beforeunload listener that checks that there are no checked elements. It is far too easy to accidentally click a link and navigate to another page. Something like this (not tested across browsers):

$(window).on("beforeunload", function() {
    if ($(".cat_a_lot_selected")[0]) {
        return confirm("Are you sure you want to leave the page? You have categories/files selected!");
    }
});

Magog the Ogre (talk) (contribs) 22:42, 29 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Remove from other category

I would appreciate to have the capacity to remove a set of images from a predefined category without having to navigate to this category page. Sometimes, I find a category having say 20 images and all the images belong to 3 categories other than the current one. If I want to remove the 20 images from these other categories, I need to navigate to the 3 category's pages and redo the selection of the images. If I could remove directly, it would be more efficient. I hope my explanations are clear. Pmau (talk) 12:51, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have the exact same problem. When I am in a species cat (Category:Conus_striatus) I want to remove fromm all files the genus cat (Category:Conus)

The reason for that is that User:Hansmuller uploaded 270.000 pictures. And placed all of this pictures in a species AND a genus cat (which is called overcategorizing)

I took the work to create the species category when they don't exist. But I need a way to remove the genus cat once I have created the species cat.

This is a lifetime work if you don't help me.

Current cat-a-lot
cat-a-lot with new 'Remove' link
We could even remove "Remove from this lib"

PS: You tool is amazing. We love it all.

Cheers Liné1 (talk) 09:08, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps off topic for the general case, but as a workaround anybody can remove the superfluous twice categorised images from say Category:Conus (or any category) with VisualFileChange (click "category", "just try", "custom replace", replace string "[[Category:Conus]]" with one space) keeping the other images, takes a few minutes, if only all underlying species categories exist. (This was checked with List of species and genera in Category:Mollusc specimens at Naturalis Biodiversity Center.) Regards, Hansmuller (talk) 15:21, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Done for Conus. Hansmuller (talk) 16:02, 22 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Using Cat-a-lot from search page

Do not show by default the categories: Category:Category redirects and Category:Pictures and images when cata-lot is used from special page "Search page" --JotaCartas (talk) 02:22, 21 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 16:44, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Editing problem

Hi,

I am affraid that this gadget is causing the problem, when we cannot type "space" and some other charecters. Can we fix it?--Juandev (talk) 08:22, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I am sorry, it is probably not caused by this gadget. Its pretty difficult to find out, where is the problem.--Juandev (talk) 09:00, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You mean, you press the [space] key and no space is inserted in the input field that is currently focussed? [yes|no] -- Rillke^(q?) 11:02, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Info I had the same problem a couple of times since beginning of summer, but as far as I remember it was in "search page - search field". I assumed it was a problem with my browser (Google Chrome), I closed the page, reinitialized the browser and problem solved.--JotaCartas (talk) 11:24, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Category placement

I've been using Cat-a-Lot over at the English Wikipedia, and it appears that of late it is ignoring category syntax when it populates the categories. See this dif as an example - that last category belongs before the stub tag, not after. Unless I've been more oblivious than usual I'd be prepared to swear that this didn't used to be the way it did things. Can it be fixed? --Ser Amantio di Nicolao (talk) 20:45, 6 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Category redirect

Cat-a-lot really should automatically redirect to or at least show the correct category when typing in a redirected category. For example, after typing in "Chippewa" and pressing enter, it should show "Ojibwa". In many cases it is very cumbersome to find the correct name and slows down the categorization process. --P 1 9 9 ✉ 17:23, 2 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

i believe this should be very easy to fix: add to the opensearch API call redirects: 'resolve'. this will tell the autocompletion not to return redirects, i think. peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 16:22, 9 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!

Can you confirm it works?
There is he:מדיה_ויקי:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js that might need updates as well.

-- Rillke^(q?) 16:45, 9 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hum, the example is a {{Category redirect}} so it works for real #redirects only, I suppose. -- Rillke^(q?) 16:49, 9 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry no, doesn't work. --P 1 9 9 ✉ 14:43, 10 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is still not resolved. @קיפודנחש: @Rillke: Can someone modify the gadget to get it to redirect to the correct category when typing in a redirected category? Thanks. --P 1 9 9 ✉ 14:10, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@P199: can you give an example of a redirected category? i still believe what i said is true, but i am not familiar with commons {{Category redirect}}. i do not think this is real "redirects" in the sense wiki understands redirects, and if it isn't, then my suggestion will probably have no effect (BTW: do category redirects make sense at all? it seems entirely counterproductive, b/c it will cause a person clicking on the cat from a page or a file to get to a cat page that does not include this page or file. i can't see the point of "true" category redirects, and can't think of a sane use case for them). peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 14:29, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

category:Chippewa, {{Category redirect}} is a template, custom stuff at Wikimedia Commons, not a redirect that MediaWiki would detect. -- Rillke^(q?) 14:33, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. You are free to submit a patch. I have run POTY and surprisingly have a real life. -- Rillke^(q?) 14:33, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I look forward to this feature being added to Cat-a-lot. It's very frustrating to be unable to follow category redirects via Cat-a-lot. A very large number of (valid) category redirects are under Category:Aviation, and many more will be needed to deal with cat name variations and their many sub-cats. PeterWD (talk) 08:26, 4 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I hope this proposal will be taken seriously, to enable us to move down through the category tree without hitting a dead end, and no way back up. Hotcat works in a different way, but that manages to deal with category redirect templates at Commons very satisfactorily.PeterWD (talk) 10:49, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

+1 for this. I do a lot of categorization for Hawaiian images, and need this at lot for characters with diacritics. For example, Category:Kilauea is a soft redirect to Category:Kīlauea, but I can't easily type the "ī" character, so I'm usually forced to go to another tab, go to the real category, then copy-paste the name into the Cat-a-lot search box. Thanks. —howcheng {chat} 21:57, 14 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Bug: can't move files with cat with slash

As we can see here: Category:Farm-Fresh people ?! ↔ User: Perhelion 20:41, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Farm-Fresh people → Category:Farm-Fresh web icons people (e.g. File:Farm-Fresh gruppe3.png). Requested wiki text from API, got wiki text, no edit, says done, background green, white after "return to page". -- Rillke^(q?) 20:50, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hej yes, it says "Can't find cat..." This 5 files are left from mass-move. ↔ User: Perhelion 21:10, 3 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(the cat with a slash is Category:Farm-Fresh web icons/derivations) --AVRS (talk) 11:11, 4 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Remark: user:Wieralee has moved the five files per hand (for example to reconstruct the situation). ↔ User: Perhelion 11:59, 5 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Incorporation of user flooder/bot status

I just had a flooder group added to Ladino Wikipedia so that I could use this tool without clogging recent changes. But even when I have assigned myself the flooder flag, Cat-a-lot edits do not show as bot edits. Can that be changed? Thanks. StevenJ81 (talk) 18:57, 11 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If it can be changed, please specify if the change is global or on a site-by-site basis, as I would like to see it on another site as well. Thanks. --Auntof6 (talk) 19:47, 11 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I probably should have asked you first, but I didn't expect that to have been a problem. (crooked grin) StevenJ81 (talk) 19:49, 11 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Auntof6, Zhuyifei1999, Rillke, or any other user. For a site-by-site, like eswiki, do you know how to change it? I have the same problem: my flood or bot flags didn't mark edits like a bot. Jmvkrecords ⚜ Intra talk 15:40, 20 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Jmvkrecords: See mw:API:Edit: Just add a line, from:

			var data = {
				action: 'edit',
				summary: comment,
				title: file[ 0 ],
				text: text,
				starttimestamp: starttimestamp,
				basetimestamp: timestamp,
				watchlist: this.settings.watchlist,
				token: this.edittoken
			};

to:

			var data = {
				action: 'edit',
				summary: comment,
				title: file[ 0 ],
				text: text,
				bot: true,
				starttimestamp: starttimestamp,
				basetimestamp: timestamp,
				watchlist: this.settings.watchlist,
				token: this.edittoken
			};

Though I'm not sure about its impact on regular users without bot/flood rights (whether they will have errors on save). If that goes problematic, feel free to ping me and I'll check how to do an automatic rights detection. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 15:59, 20 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Great Zhuyifei1999! Tool is running with my flood flag, and now all is perfect. Thank you, Jmvkrecords ⚜ Intra talk 19:05, 20 December 2016 (UTC).[reply]

~~I tested on Simple English Wikipedia, and it works there, too. Thanks very much for this great improvement! --Auntof6 (talk) 19:27, 20 December 2016 (UTC)~~[reply]

Actually, the test I did there wasn't the right one. When I did the right one, this didn't work. @StevenJ81: , have you tested on a Wikipedia? --Auntof6 (talk) 17:41, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Auntof6: Not yet. Will try next couple of days. StevenJ81 (talk) 17:44, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I can't figure out where I'm supposed to make this edit. StevenJ81 (talk) 18:02, 22 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Bug: choose [all] compatibility with Gadget-GalleryFilterExtension.js

With the nice MediaWiki:Gadget-GalleryFilterExtension.js you can filter the file-type (I was not anymore aware that this is a custom gadget). Then I chooses all (Cat-a-lot), to expected would have been only the displayed get selected, but unfortunately it was really all (not displaying). Is there any chance to solve this? (@Rillke: I guess if not that must be documented?) ↔ User: Perhelion 06:26, 30 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
PS: The Gadget-GalleryFilterExtension uses simple jQuery hide, so the simple solution would to check display: none;!? ↔ User: Perhelion 06:58, 30 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Suggested change, please review: --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 03:47, 16 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Implemented --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 12:21, 10 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Missing "Move" command

At the moment, I can only get the "add" command to come up in the Cat-a-lot pop-up box. Thus I have 500 files in the new Commons Category:Photographs by Bob Wick, with no way to move them out of the parent cat, Photographs by Bureau of Land Management. Help? TIA, --Pete Tillman (talk) 03:08, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed this problem by logging out/logging in [doh!]. But see below. --Pete Tillman (talk) 14:52, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Problems with "Remove from this category" command

Here's the problem:

Create a new category, use cat-a-lot tool to add same to a list of files.
Attempt to remove a (now-superfluous) parent of the new cat from the same list
Tool instead removes all files in the list from the new cat! Very frustrating!

I read the instructions carefully and fiddled with this for quite a while and can't solve it. Help! --Pete Tillman (talk) 15:08, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have a similar case. Whenever I try to move or remove images from a category I receive the message "The following x pages were skipped, because the old category could not be found". E.g. from Category:Images from Wiki Loves Monuments 2016 in Bulgaria to Category:Images from Wiki Loves Monuments 2016 in Bulgaria, Unchecked Images. A whole bunch of people would be happy if the bug would be fixed. --Lord Bumbury (talk) 18:20, 14 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If the category is added by a template, then Cat-a-Lot can't remove it. Cat-a-Lot can only work with categories that are hardcoded. Keep in mind, though, that in some cases (which very likely include these WLM ones), it's possible that both categories should remain, even if it looks like overcategorization. --Auntof6 (talk) 18:28, 14 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

[Request] Enable Cat-a-Lot on Special:UncategorizedFiles

It would be nice to enable Cat-a-lot on Special:UncategorizedFiles. --XXN, 15:44, 7 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

[Request] Enable Cat-a-Lot on Special:Contributions

... also on Special:Contributions. --XXN, 14:26, 13 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

+ on Special:ListFiles/

...and on Special:ListFiles/$1 too. --XXN, 19:46, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Probably a quarter of this needs to be written/rewritten to enable these :( --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 05:36, 20 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm (slowly) working on this --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 14:09, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Special:Diff/227286722/227286567 should do. I'll copy back if nobody finds any errors. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 16:36, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your efforts, Zhuyifei. Tested on Special:UncategorizedFiles, and seems to work. --XXN, 17:31, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done and no problem :) --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 06:41, 24 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

option to re-enable following links

Could an option be added to re-enable following links, i.e. undo Special:Diff/202801008 via the preferences pane? (Safari allows selecting pages using Cat-a-lot, visiting a page and going back to where I left off.) Ping Perhelion (once again). FDMS 4 21:24, 11 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@FDMS4: Links still work if you click on the thumbnail instead of the filename. --Sebari (talk) 22:01, 12 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Srittau: Not for non-file pages and only if you have disabled the MediaViewer (or don't need the content in the same tab). FDMS 4 04:12, 13 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please highligt selected row

Please highligt selected row (tr:hover) --Butko (talk) 05:19, 22 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

For example: #cat_a_lot_category_list tr:hover {background:#D7D7D7;} --Butko (talk) 20:46, 25 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Done That was bugging me for quite sometime myself. Sebari – aka Srittau (talk) 18:20, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Remove newline character when removing a category

@Magnus Manske, DieBuche, and Rillke:

When Cat-a-lot removes a category from a page, it won't remove any newline character, leaving an extra empty line. This edit is one example. I hope someone can fix this problem. --Lt2818 (talk) 05:55, 13 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Assert

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.

Hello, would it be possible to add the following line to the params on the line 520?

assert: 'user'

A user on cswiki was able to make several edits as an IP adress, this change should allow editing only and only if users are really logged in, see mw:API:Assert. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 13:27, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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

ToDo List

Comments

Categorizing uncategorized content with Cat-a-lot

some modifications, Hebrew translations.

Subcats

Bugs and suggestions

Hidden categories and GLAM

Removing instead of moving

I love it, but I have a suggestion for improvement... 2

For galleries

Misalignments

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

Invisible characters in Category names

Duplicate category

Speed cap?

Fail unsafe

Problems in Monobook

flat file lists as input

collapsing box for selecting

Does Cat-a-lot always remove {{Uncategorized}}?

Bugs

Any idea why ...

working on template /doc

Feature request: Invert selection

One of the DUMBEST tools here

Selecting of more than one file

Remove all categories but one

all / all media / all categories / none

Removing category problems

Cat-a-lot doesn't understand a category with diacritics?

Load in categories only

What is happen with Cat-a-lot?

Uncategorizing; redirects

Request: Change white area to gray even on error

Navigate to category page

Process custom list with cat-a-lot

New categories don't show up

Listbox of categories doesn't show some

Add Category to Multiple images

Cryptic error msg

unnecessary message box

Thoughts on category sorting

Request for custom edit summary in Cat-a-lot

Sorting in searches

Removed from category $1

Link to Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot

Undo mistake?

Cat-a-lot at the gallery pages

Searchbox- Window text

Filter out invisible LTR marks

English Wikipedia

Possible select-all bug: double-counting?

Weird glitch with files that refuse to be moved/relocated.

overview

Minimize window

Return to page

Cat-a-lot for Wikipedia

Not working

Not working

Change default preference

Verify before leaving page

Remove from other category

Using Cat-a-lot from search page

Editing problem

Category placement

Category redirect

Bug: can't move files with cat with slash

Incorporation of user flooder/bot status

Bug: choose [all] compatibility with Gadget-GalleryFilterExtension.js

Missing "Move" command

Problems with "Remove from this category" command

[Request] Enable Cat-a-Lot on Special:UncategorizedFiles

[Request] Enable Cat-a-Lot on Special:Contributions

+ on Special:ListFiles/

option to re-enable following links

Please highligt selected row

Remove newline character when removing a category

Assert

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