How to put a label on an issue in GitHub if you are not a contributor / owner?

Question

It's only available for contributors.

This way, you can avoid random people assigning the wrong labels and messing up your categories.

It would however be useful if you could in some manner propose labels. Then you could mark an issue as what you think is a bug, so the owner can just confirm that. Many people suggest labels in the title: [proposed Label] actual title

GitHub issue templates labels (.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/XXX.md, December 2018)

https://help.github.com/en/articles/creating-issue-templates-for-your-repository

The issue template feature is much older, but with an update from December 2018 https://github.blog/changelog/2018-12-05-issue-template-automation-improvements/ it can now auto assign labels to templates, and it has become a good solution to this problem.

With this feature, repository admins can create a set of issue templates, and assign a set of labels to each template.

Then, whenever an user creates a new issue, even non admins, then can choose between one of the templates, and if they do, the labels get assigned!

I like this approach, because it effectively allows you to determine a subset of labels that anybody can create, while still potentially reserving other labels for collaborators only.

Here is a test repo of mine that you can freely create issues on to test it out: https://github.com/cirosantilli/test-git-web-interface/issues/new

The templates can be created from GitHub's repo Settings tab, but even if you do it from there it just generates magic files under the .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE directory, see e.g.: https://github.com/cirosantilli/test-git-web-interface/tree/7f2bb195ff303a037499c1c349b3c89158221674/.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE which is good as it keeps more repo metadata inside the repo.

The directory could contain something like:

.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/bug.md

---
name: bug
about: Use this template to report existing bugs.
title: 'Bug'
labels: bug

---

.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/feature-request.md

---
name: feature-request
about: Use this template to request new features.
title: 'Feature request'
labels: feature-request

---

Old answer

I have submitted this request to [email protected] and https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/148 and pointed to this question.

@jdennes replied with the usual neutral:

I've added a +1 to this item on our Feature Request List for consideration.

which confirms it is not possible.

Let's upvote this question to heavens until they do it!