[Mediawiki-l] Tracking the use of extensions?

[Daniel Barrett]

I'd like an easy way to discover which articles on my wiki use a given parser tag or parser function.  Regex search would give only an approximate answer.

For example, the wiki could automatically create (hidden) categories called "Articles that use parser tag A", "Articles that use parser function B", etc., and populate them. What would be the best way to implement this with an extension?

-       Use a Save hook, such as ArticleSave or ArticleSaveComplete, and perhaps some custom database tables to store the info?
-       Affect the core extension code so when any extension executes, it adds the current article to the category?
-       Something else?

We can do this manually with our own extensions, but we'd rather not modify third-party extensions in this way.

Any other ideas?
Thanks,
DanB