Template talk:Tracking category

Template:Tracking category is permanently protected from editing because it is a heavily used or highly visible template. Substantial changes should first be proposed and discussed here on this page. If the proposal is uncontroversial or has been discussed and is supported by consensus, editors may use {{edit extended-protected}} to notify an administrator, template editor or extended-confirmed editor to make the requested edit. Usually, any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes or categories.

Any contributor may edit the template's sandbox. Functionality of the template can be checked using test cases.

Example of ALTTEXT

Call example

{{Tracking category|inhibit=y|ALTTEXT=This is an example of 'alternative text which ''may be italicized'' {{I2}}Spaced vertically{{S|10}}or spaced and even spaced out horizontally. {{I0}}and such effects from typing-aids templates.|CATS=[[Category:A]] [[Category:B]] }}

results in

{{Tracking category|inhibit=y|ALTTEXT=This is an example of 'alternative text which ''may be italicized'' {{I2}}Spaced vertically{{S|10}}or spaced and even spaced out horizontally. {{I0}}and such effects from typing-aids templates. |CATS=<nowiki>[[Category:A]][[Category:B]]}}</nowiki>

Example above removed from template page // FrankB 08:25, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What are you talking about? McLerristarr | Mclay1 10:12, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Purpose

"This is a tracking category[.] It is used to build and maintain lists of pages—primarily for the sake of the lists themselves." Do lists have feelings, or am I misinterpreting this template? Hyacinth (talk) 23:00, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Hyacinth: They're called tracking categories because we use then to keep track of information, usually in order to find out which pages have, or do not have, a particular item of information. For example, the template {{short description}} has code that adds articles to Category:Articles with short description, so by examining that category we know which articles are using that template. Another example is {{infobox London station}}, which has code that adds articles to Category:London stations without latest usage statistics 1617 - but only when the |railexits1617= and |raillowexits1617= parameters are both empty or missing; in this way we can find out which articles we still need to add usage statistics to. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:10, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Empty category

@Gonnym: about this, I had filed Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MalnadachBot 14 to remove the duplicate {{empty category}} from category pages that transclude this template. Considering that a lot of tracking categories are often empty and to prevent admins from unnecessarily deleting them (see Bearcat's comment in BRFA), embedding it in this seems like a good idea. Will you consider restoring it and letting the bot remove duplicates? ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 03:08, 7 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is the kind of unnecessary hassle that can be avoided by embedding the template. I have restored it since the bot has been approved for trail and all duplicates will be removed soon. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 06:25, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Add parameter "template"

What if template {{Tracking category}} had an optional parameter |template=, which produced additional output, something like:

This is a tracking category populated by the template {{example}}.

?

Examples of similar templates:

Examples of where it would be useful:

One issue I can foresee, is that if it's a single parameter, it won't be simple to support categories populated by multiple templates, like Category:Hatnote templates using unusual parameters, which is populated by two – {{for}} and {{other uses of}}. —⁠andrybak (talk) 17:43, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I was just thinking this myself as I thought it already had that function. I'll add the basic function for one template. MClay1 (talk) 09:08, 28 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly empty category display options

The parameter |delete-empty= can prevent the transclusion of Template:Possibly empty category. The name seems to me to also indicate affirmatively that the category should be deleted if it is empty. I wonder about adding a way to hide the template without making this claim for categories that are highly unlikely to ever be empty, eg. Category:Articles containing non-English-language text.

For English Wikipedia, one might regard this as a moot issue, based on the logic that the only difference is in a case that we don't expect to ever occur. However, I think our category structure should largely be able to be duplicated on other languages of Wikipedia, where these categories may actually be empty sometimes.

Options:

Add a new parameter |never-empty=. From the perspective of this template, it would be an alias for |delete-empty=. This is easy to implement.
Deprecate |delete-empty= and replace it with a new |when-empty= with three accepted values: delete, keep, or unexpected/never. unexpected or never means that it should not be deleted if it is empty, but this is never expected to occur.
Replace Template:Possibly empty category with a less garish message, akin to {{Maintenance category|empty=yes}}. Template:Possibly empty category could be intentionally transcluded by editors on pages where they think a more prominent message is necessary.
Regard |delete-empty= as not making an absolute claim about what should happen if the category is empty, and use it on pages which are not expected to be empty.

In either of the first two cases, it's a maintenance task to review empty categories that are marked as not expected to be empty. Daask (talk) 04:52, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]