Existing Tags don't appear the "optional tags" list and cannot be used

Support
1

I have a list of about 100 tags added in Tag-Group-A, some of them have been used to tag posts (active), some of them never used.

For unknown reason some of the existing tags (used and never used) stop appearing in the optional tags list when trying to add them to a topic (either new or when editing old topic).

Any ideas how to fix the weird things described below?

Observation 1:

As an admin I can create a copy of such a broken tag and add it to a topic, i.e.:

  • Suppose I have a broken “tagX”, when I type the “tagX” into the tag-chooser, I get the No matches found note (although it is in “Tag-Group-A” and category has no tag restrictions).
  • But if I add a " " (space), then the “tagX” gets added to the list of tags (in the input box).
  • However, when I hit save button the tagX appears in the tags list under the title of the topic, but immediately disappears. :crazy_face: (looks like optimistic updates)

Observation 2:

  • I removed the broken tags from “Tag-Group-A” and added them to a new “Tag-Group-B”.
  • Now I can successfully add those tags to new and old topics, as expected.
  • The reverse doesn’t work, i.e. if I move those tags back to “Tag-Group-A” - same problem. :frowning:

Observation 3:

I’ve looked at number of topics about tags (including Tag gets broken if the first topic to use it is deleted) and:

  • going to my.site/latest?status=deleted for the first time, I saw the list of previously deleted topics.
  • I opened one deleted topic and removed some tags (although those tags weren’t among broken ones) and saved the post (and deleted it again).
  • after that going to the same my.site/latest?status=deleted, I repeatedly get the 404 page (Page doesn’t exist or not public) although I’m the Admin :upside_down_face:

EDIT: This is single-container Discourse-only VPS, at (5ad1709)

2

Do you know how to reproduce the problem? I can’t tell from your observations how you setup your tags. Have you added any tag restrictions to your categories? Have you set a parent tag on the group? Did you check “Limit one tag per topic from this group”? Do the broken tags appear on the /tags page?

1 Like
3

I could only reproduce those observations. I wish I could help more.
No, category has no restrictions on tags.
No, there’s no parent tag set for any tag group.
No, “Limit one tag per topic from this group” is not checked.
Yes, the broken tags do appear on /tags page.

Some of the broken tags have been working before and do have active topics associated with them, and those topics appear listed as expected when clicking on that tag.
However I can no longer add those tags to other topics. (the workaround is to put those tags in a new group as described in Observation 2)

BTW I did try to rebuild the app, but the problem persists.

4

If you aren’t adding category restrictions, then what are you using the tag groups for? This sounds like tag group A has been assigned to another category for exclusive use…

3 Likes
5

For organizational purpose I keep tags in separate groups like “cities”, " organ systems", “drug groups” etc. (health forum).

In future I may restrict some categories to make use of only certain tag groups, but currently removed all such restrictions.

I thought it isn’t possible yet to assign a tag-group to be used with only one category.
Anyway, I didn’t set it on purpose where could I check for such setting?
(couldn’t find such setting in Edit Category dialog or on tag groups management page.)