  Feature tracking and recognition are increasingly common tools for data
analysis, but are typically implemented on an ad-hoc basis by individual
research groups, limiting the usefulness of derived results when selection
effects and algorithmic differences are not controlled. Specific results that
are affected include the solar magnetic turnover time, the distributions of
sizes, strengths, and lifetimes of magnetic features, and the physics of both
small scale flux emergence and the small-scale dynamo. In this paper, we
present the results of a detailed comparison between four tracking codes
applied to a single set of data from SOHO/MDI, describe the interplay between
desired tracking behavior and parameterization of tracking algorithms, and make
recommendations for feature selection and tracking practice in future work.
