Help:Tracking categories/en

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 MediaWiki 1.23, tracking categories are listed in the configuration variable, and can be viewed on 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 system message, that is, a page in MediaWiki namespace. If the message is a single dash (-), then the tracking category is disabled. Often wiki admins mark such categories as hidden (using the ( magic word), since they are meant for maintenance and not general consumption. Some sites use 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 Parser::addTrackingCategory method).

Some wikis add other sort of tracking categories via some hacks, for instance this category, which tracks pages with #expr errors, added through the relevant errors shown on such pages.