The Tags section from the sidebar should show the All tags link even when the list is empty

Contribute UX
,

AI-generated summary

The discussion revolves around the “Tags” section in the Discourse sidebar. Canapin points out that when the list is empty, the “All tags” link is absent. pfaffman thinks this is a feature, arguing that it’s unnecessary to link to tags if there are none. However, Canapin and Moin counter that there may be existing tags not displayed in the sidebar, and the link is necessary for navigation to the /tags page. Merefield agrees, suggesting that the “Tags” section should link to the Tags page if no tags are set. Moin also shares a real-world example where the absence of this link caused confusion among users.

1

Screenshots will talk more than trying to explain:

  • The Tags section has tags, the All tags link is present:

    image
    image240×188 3.56 KB

  • The Tags section has no tags, the All tags link is absent (there is no other link to go to /tags as far as I know):
    image

I understand it’s an edge case :slight_smile:

4 Likes
Removing the legacy hamburger navigation menu option
2

I think this is a feature. If you don’t have any tags, why waste space linking to them?

1 Like
3

We can have existing tags (my wording wasn’t the best), but we also may want not to display some on the sidebar for whatever reason. If we do so, we have no link anywhere else that leads to /tags.

3 Likes
5

For me this is not an edge case.

A forum (i think hosted by discourse) I visit used the legacy menu untill yesterday. Today the new menu is shown. But since no one added any defaults, it looks like this

_20230525_215656
_20230525_215656640×1011 23.2 KB

Users miss the opition to navigate to /categories or choose a categoy like they could with the hamburger menu. It is quite difficult to notice that there is a new tab in your settings, in which you can configure this menu yourself.
If the Categories and tags sections would show there would be an option in the menu to navigate to /categories and /tags. Also the pencil icon would show, so it would be easier to explore the new settings.

3 Likes
6

i think the admins at that forum have not yet set up the default sidebar categories and default sidebar tags in admin settings. then the users should be able to configure their own sidebar categories in their preferences side bar section.

7

As a user you can also change your settings before the admin chooses a default. But therefore you have to notice that there are new settings. Since you don’t get a notification like “there was a software update, the design of the menu was changed, you can personalize the menu in your settings.”
So everyone thought it was a discourse bug that almost all links disappeared from the menu.

That’s why I think a default which shows the options to personalize the sections is a better default than an empty menu.

2 Likes
8

Ideally if there are no Tags set this should act as a link to the Tags page.

I personally don’t want to prioritize any tags for this section as my tags have fairly equal importance and I don’t want dozens here. So having a link to the Tags page would be far more useful.

2 Likes