Template recall and discovery (Community Wishlist/FA4)
Via the template dialog, it is hard for contributors find and insert templates.
We've bucketed this work into "template discovery", helping newcomers learn how to use templates and find a template, and "template recall," helping experienced editors find and insert templates they've successfully used.
At this stage, we are focused on template recall first, and template discovery second.
Since 2013, experienced volunteers have asked for a more intuitive template selector, exposing popular or most-used templates on the templates dialog.
This ties into our PES 1.3.2 OKR: By building an improved template discovery, we will have addressed 3+ wishes that constitute a “Focus area,” and will have a Proof of Concept to share with the Foundation for annual planning.
Today’s User experience:
When an editor clicks on “templates” from either Wikitext or Visual Editor, the template selector is empty. This design is not very helpful for newcomers who seek to add a template, or for experienced editors who must type in a template name.
One volunteer said:
As a beginner, one may spend half an hour finding the appropriate template – and if it doesn’t have an easy-to-remember name (what is easy-to-remember is subjective, so it may not be possible to find a name that’s easy to remember for everyone), one needs to spend this half hour the second, third and fifteenth time as well. [favoriting templates] doesn't solve the problem of the first half-hour search, but it does solve the ones of the subsequent ones
Scope and investigations
Because we want to ship iteratively, we are limiting the scope of this focus area. For example, we will not consider global templates and instead opt for incremental improvements to the template selection experience.
There are over 600k templates on English Wikipedia, and many wikis have over 30k templates. Helping someone find the right template is a challenge.
We think the following recall or discovery tactics might be useful and actionable, and are under consideration:
- Suggest templates that are most popular/transcluded in your wiki (ideally namespace)
- Show templates you’ve recently used
- Allow users to “favorite” or bookmark templates
- Highlight templates with descriptions and good documentation
- Improve search
We think the following methods of template recall or discovery could be fraught with challenges and are less actionable in the early stages.
- Filter templates by categories. There are over 33k template categories on EN wiki, and 120+ categories of “Element isotopes.” Even for the experienced editor, it’s cumbersome to search.
- Popular templates across wikis. Not every wiki has the same instantiation of “Infobox,” or “Sfn.” It will be hard to scale.
- Allow editors of a local wiki to recommend templates. While this aligns to wiki principles, given the breadth of templates and template categories, it would be cumbersome to build a "template recommendation configuration" experience that scales to all wikis. At this stage, we are seeking lower-effort initiatives.
Community engagement
Since this focus area was created off the 2023 wishlist and was identified before our 2024 rollout, the wishes have already been voted for, and so we are aware the issues raised are important to the community. You can vote for the focus area and also leave feedback to help give an indication if we are moving in the right direction.
We are currently in the design phase of this work, and will share updates on this page. Feedback is certainly requested and welcomed!
Design explorations
Following screen mockups show how templates can be favourited and retrieved as per user's requirement. These are initial explorations and we would welcome any feedback.
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1. Favourite templates -
2. Favouriting a template from search result -
3. Recently searched templates -
4. Recently used templates and the articles where they have been used
Design update 19 March 2025
Further to our last design update, the team has now narrowed down the scope of the initial features of template recall and discovery. Templates can be added to the favorite list directly from the search result or from the insert dialog box. When a template is removed from the favorites list, an undo action will be available from the confirmation message in case it was an accidental removal. Furthermore, Add to favorite action will be available from the parameter.
Following are some screen mockups with the latest updates in design:
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1. Empty favorites list -
2. Search and favorite templates -
3. List of favorite templates -
4. Remove template from the favorite list -
5. Add to favorite from template information window
Note that UI copy/localization is not final and there maybe more changes before release.
As always, any feedback is welcome.
Design update 17 June 2025
There have been early design explorations around a category-based search for templates. Currently, the search is limited and can search for keywords 5 subcategories deep. By specifying and selecting a relevant category, the search will be able to surface more results.
Please feel free to share your feedback about the designs through a 4-question MediaWiki survey.
Following are some screen mockups with the latest design explorations:
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1. Opening the list of categories -
2. Opening a subcategory -
3. Subcategory selected -
4. List of templates within selected subcategory
- Created: 21:02, 4 September 2024
- Last updated: 21:29, 10 October 2025
This focus area currently has 40 supporters. Voting for this focus area is open until it is completed.
