Require users to enter Discussion Tags?

mis-one

How can I do check (like the one used for Topics) that requires a user to enter something in the Discussion Tags box?

Mr Do

what? are you using a translater? could you give a more descriptive example? maybe a screenshot or something?

mis-one

Haha nah, I am english and hadn't woken up yet, sorry about that. I am wanting to require users to enter atleast (1) DiscussionTag when they Start a Discussion. If they do not enter a tag, it will not submit and redirect them back to do so. So in other words, I'm wanting to emulate the error message you get if you do not enter a Topic, just for DiscussionTags instead.

SlashedZero

I'd love to have such a feature too.

Mr Do

first off. One have to use the PreSaveDiscussion delegate on the DiscussionForm class.
i suspect that one would have to check if the discussion contains tags. $this->Discussion->tag != "" probably. I dont have the discussion tag installed atm, so cant check.

MySchizoBuddy

this is one annoying feature
I'll just leave the forum if it forces me to use it in a certain way.
I'll just start putting "dafds^%^dfgs&&#dfa" in the discussion tags so i can post the discussion.

Gauzy

while i can agree with myschizobuddy that this can tend to be annoying, there's no point in having a feature if users aren't going to take advantage of it, so i can see where mis-one is coming from.

i have a hard enough time getting users to select the right category, so i can only imagine the nightmare i'd run into if i used tags.

my own two cents on tags - they work great for blogs because usually there's only one author, or maybe several contributers. because of this, you've got a group of people who are 1) more apt to use tags in the first place and 2) are going to use (generally) similar tags, or know to tag things similarly (ie: not having 1,000 different tags for the same general idea, just using 'weird' as a catch-all there). for forums it's generally a much larger user-base, some of whom just won't take advantage of the feature or use it in a way that makes sense. in theory, tagged discussions would be fantastic if everybody took advantage of it, but the fact of the matter is you're going to wind up with people who, like myschizobuddy says, are just going to post nonsense to subvert the system rather than working with it. if you're using tags in place of categories though, not forcing one or the other is going to lead to things just being a giant bowl of spaghetti, so i'd hope users wouldn't mind entering a couple extra words about their discussion.

anyways, that's getting a bit off topic, i guess i'm just venting my thoughts on the matter.

i've never used the tags extensions because i like categories just fine, but perhaps it could output a tag cloud when posting a new discussion? clicking them in this instance would input the corresponding tag into the tag field, rather than linking to other discussions with the same tag. this is more of another suggestion altogether though, and i've deviated enough.

Krak

what about specifying a default tag? Make the word "General" or something be in the box on page load, so if they want to add tags they can, otherwise people who apparently cant add a tag because it requires so much extra typing wouldn't have to and it would default to something at least.