Hi and thanks to you helpful folks.

I don't have vagrant, but I do have good notes on how to install MediaWiki with git clone, so I'll put the old (upgraded and possibly not working as expected due to a past error, usually on my part) aside and install clean 1.35 and get back to this thread if it turns out the MW was not in a consistent state or if the problem with the template imports still perists. Right now I have some work, but I will try to do this soon after I've done the work the boss needs.

Thank you for solving the issue for me @Jdlrobson.

Big thanks @Anomie for solving the issue.

Looking at the grants makes me think that the idea was to share also tables user and user_properties, but I have not done that.

Big thank you to everyone that has helped.

The limit was an empty value, not zero. Setting it to 500 solved the issue and as there is a task already this issue can be closed. I've never touched the Watched Articles settings and at some point this started to exhibit but now the case is solved and Watchlist is back to working ok.

Here is a screenshot of the problem of empty result always

Thanks matmarex. Ctrl-m fixed it.