A user MarcP accidentally added a tag as a synonym of itself, resulting in a stuck state where the tag and synonym could not be deleted due to errors (500 and 422). simon tested this on a local site and found that clicking the “Remove Synonym” button gave a 422 error, while clicking the trash icon completely deleted the tag.
The issue was recognized as something that should not be allowed to happen, and codinghorror assigned it for fixing the following week. The bug was later fixed via a commit by techAPJ.
However, MarcP was still unable to delete the tag, and techAPJ attempted to help. After trying various methods, sam suggested a SQL query that ultimately worked to delete the tag: DB.exec("delete from tags where name = 'testing'").
I’m testing this on my local development site. After creating the synonym, clicking the “Remove Synonym” button gives a 422 error. Clicking the trash icon for the synonym doesn’t give me a 500 error, instead it completely deletes the tag.
I think some protection should be added to prevent a tag from being set as its own synonym.