Thanks for contributing. The current template is that way by design, because if they were actual checkboxes the PR list view would show 1/x checkboxes checked. It would be nice if we had some way of creating radio buttons that only allowed one to be selected, but markdown unfortunately doesn’t support that.

Haha, okay, that's fair enough. It seems like contributors are confused enough that they only follow the instructions half of the time, though. I went through the first 4 pages of PRs and counted:

• 47 left the list as-is, added one X in one of the boxes 👌
• 39 edited the list down to just one item with [X] in front of it
• 5 left the list as-is, added X in two of the boxes
• 5 edited the markdown so it's a list of checkboxes, then added one X (this includes my PRs)
• 1 edited the list down to one item without [X]
• 1 edited the list down to two items with [X] in front
• 1 left the list as-is without adding any X at all 🤔
• 1 removed the list altogether 🙈

I guess it doesn't really matter, actually. But I'll maintain that it does look like a mistake in the templates when you know the gh flavored markdown syntax for a checkbox 😼

Agreed. I think there are two issues at play:

1. The one you mentioned, where it can easily seem like a typo if you’re used to writing lists in markdown.
2. We as a team haven’t been very good at enforcing these rules.

It definitely would be nice to figure out a better system. In my personal experience, templates in general don’t seem to be very effective in issues or PRs (though they’re better than nothing!).

If you have a suggestion for an alternative system, I’d love to hear your idea!

Agree with @kaicataldo that the template format is intentional. I’d suggest opening an issue if you have other ideas about how to improve the template.