ypnypn9 wrote:

How about just using the word "Template"? Words are more obvious than even the best icons. (A disadvantage of this is that it would require a lot of translations, but this is not a huge problem.)

(In reply to comment #0)

en.wp user Risker reports from an editathon that of the participants:
"not a one of them understood what the "puzzle piece" was supposed to
represent, and when shown, all of them still thought it was a poorly chosen
icon.

Yeah; we all hate it, and are using it because it's the least-bad option suggested so far (it's historically been the icon used in attempts at visual editors for MW since 2003).

Most had no suggestion as to an alternative, although two thought
"curly brackets" would be a good idea. I suspect that's because they'd seen
curly brackets for templates when using wikitext."

Indeed - we're trying to break the linkage with wikitext, and I don't think braces make for much of an increased level of obviousness.

The new toolbar which allows buttons to self-describe if they're in a drop-down may help this significantly, but for now will keep this open.

Can we close this given we now show text in the menu?