Modularize tagging

+1 for synonym collapse in core.

Using select elements and autocomplete textfields as term selectors have been part of Taxonomy for a long time. Although tagging isn't necessarily a feature of taxonomy (note the lowercase) I feel it is a great addition that requires only little code and should continue to exist in Drupal core as an optional widget for selecting (and possibly creating) terms. A new use case for the autocomplete widget would be to use it as a means to quickly add new predefined tags via the administration pages. Bottom line: I vote for a default autocomplete widget in core.

As long as we make widgets pluggable and selectable, we can ship any widgets with Taxonomy we want. Tagging will no longer be a setting for a vocabulary, but rather a field's widget type. Basically widgets define how users select and possibly add terms from and to a vocabulary.

In creating the autotagging module I had thought about this approach as well, but given that all taxonomies are equal in D<7, we opted for a "just add to what's there" kind of approach.

Being able to specify plugins / widgets for taxonomy selection or insertion is an interesting idea, but how useful beyond a few select cases (I'm thinking hierarchical select widget, for example)?

The notion of how taxonomies are defined and architected is more interesting however: For example, how to define relationships between taxonomies? I'm also curious to see if anyone had thought of any ontological mapping (e.g. adding a term "cats" if other tags include "siamese," "himalayan," "tabby," and/or "russian blue"). There's a WHOLE TON of things that a plugin system for taxonomic data structures offers.

Open to hearing what everyone else thinks.

I have thought about this issue a lot as well, and given that taxonomy has become a term reference field in D7, I believe it starts to overlap with the node reference field module. I believe both fulfill a similar purpose, namely establishing relationships between nodes.

With the recent node relationships module:
http://drupal.org/project/noderelationships

I would go as far that for D8 we may not even need taxonomy any longer, because if Node Relationships matures enough we can just link together nodes with a node reference field, that references a "taxonomy" content type :)

And immediately you get all the benefits of nodes, namely moderation, commenting etc. that are a coveted feature of taxonomy...

So try this:
1. Create a new Tags content type
2. Add a node reference field (with http://drupal.org/project/noderefcreate) to your main content type

And voilá you have a "vocabulary" that is now a content type with all the benefits of nodes, that is moderation, voting, comments etc etc etc :)

- We do need Taxonomy (for now), because Taxonomy's two main features are referencing terms and nodes and references between terms. AFAIK it has already been decided that comments, users, terms, etc. will not be converted to nodes, but that we will move towards an entity API that is linked to field API.
- From this point of view Taxonomy will probably at most be converted to an hierarchical reference field system.
- I want comments as fields (very subjective wish from the lonely developer writing this post and completely unrelated to this issue.

We do need Taxonomy (for now), because Taxonomy's two main features are referencing terms and nodes and references between terms. AFAIk it has already been decided that comments, users, terms, etc. will not be converted to nodes, but that we will move towards an entity API that is linked to field API.

Good point Xano, although I believe relationships between terms is just a nested tagging of terms.

If we continue with my example, if we create a third content type called for example Tags Relations, we can create a node reference inside the Tags content type, and just start tagging away :P

How about that? :)

I am not saying this is ideal or is the best, all I am saying is that it is easily achievable in 2 separate ways.

So far all my sites used taxonomy, but I got fed up with its lack of moderation, voting etc. I also want my term pages to be much more elaborate , so I am slowly moving over to node references and such.

One thing that is not as easy at the moment is hierarchy.

However, if Node Relationships (http://drupal.org/project/noderelationships) module merges with Node Hierarchy (http://drupal.org/project/nodehierarchy), than bingo... Bye bye old taxonomy. We still keep its features, but now use new shiny stuff.

AFAIK it has already been decided that comments, users, terms, etc. will not be converted to nodes