Help:Tracking categories

Tracking categories are a feature of MediaWiki that allows pages with certain characteristics to be tracked. It works by adding any such page to a category automatically.

Since 1>Special:MyLanguage/MediaWiki 1.23|MediaWiki 1.23, tracking categories are listed in the configuration variable, and can be viewed on 2>Special:TrackingCategories. Since MediaWiki 1.25, tracking categories, which are added by MediaWiki itself, are hard-coded in the MediaWiki source code, and is kept for backwards compatibility.

What category to use is determined by the tracking category's 1>Special:MyLanguage/Help:System message|system message, that is, a page in MediaWiki namespace. If the message is a single hyphen-minus (-), then the tracking category is disabled. Often wiki admins mark such categories as hidden (using the  magic>Special:MyLanguage/Help:Magic words|magic word), since they are meant for maintenance and not general consumption. Some sites use 3>Extension:ParserFunctions|Parser functions to modify which category is used based on namespace, but that doesn't work properly until 1.19.

Extensions can also add new tracking categories (via  method).

Some wikis add other sort of tracking categories via some hacks, for instance itwiki1>w:it:Categoria:Pagine con errori nelle espressioni|this category, which tracks pages with  #expr  errors, added through the itwiki2>w:it:Special:PrefixIndex/MediaWiki:Pfunc expr|relevant errors shown on such pages.