For template-based tasks, such as copyediting, we allow administrators to define the list of templates that are then used to generate the list of tasks. This is available from Special:CommunityConfiguration/GrowthSuggestedEdits and looks like this:
As one can see, the templates are listed without the Template: namespace prefix. This is different from the Infobox templates section, which includes the namespace prefix as well (and often includes non-template pages, such as Lua modules and the like). So far, everything is clear, as the description clearly talks about templates, so the prefix is implied.
However, when I attempt to add a new template, things start to get confusing. After typing in A (as a start of a new template, I see the following suggestions in the autocompletion dialog:
Those are articles starting with the letter A, not templates, which is super confusing. If I type in Template:A, the expected list of pages displays:
Even with this bug, it continues to be possible to add new templates. Either ignoring the autocompletion and adding another unprefixed entry (which will not be on the list) or adding the prefix for the new entry will work, and there should be no breakage. However, the user experience with this is super confusing.
This can be fixed in several ways:
- Temporarily disabling the autosuggestion for those fields: If there is no autosuggestion, then the admin would need to type in the full template name (and hit enter). The confusion is less likely to occur, as the misleading autocompletion will not show. However, this results in degraded user experience (although arguably less degraded than the status quo), as (working) autocompletion is useful to avoid mistakes.
- Default to the Template namespace when working with templates: Instead of the main namespace, we can work with the Template namespace as being the default (when no prefix is used). That way, the autosuggestion will primarily show templates, and if the admin uses an explicit prefix, then we would switch to a different namespace. This would've been easy with parametrized widgets, but we currently lack that capability (so we would have to create a whole new widget just for templates, which does not make much sense).
- Add prefixes to the current entries: Since both unprefixed and prefixed entries work, we can also just add the Template: prefix to the (unprefixed) entries we have right now. That way, admins will know the prefix is needed, and will likely type it out when adding a new template. This is a data migration, but since we have the support for that (almost) ready, it should not be a terribly difficult operation.