Share terms across taxonomies?

[jfarthing84]

Is there any reason that a term can't be shared across a taxonomy? For instance, I make a category called "Things" and a category "Things". Why not use the same term id for each taxonomy record, therefore also utilizing the same slug instead of things and things-2. Is there a reason this wouldn't work?

[dd32]

The only reason that it doesnt "work" is that the terms are then shared, and modifying one modifies the other.

I'm not 100% sure if it worked like you're saying in 2.9, I know in 3.0 early it did (after i started hacking away at taxonomy UI), It recently changed to unique the slug accross all taxonomies however, So as to give distinct terms accross the board.. That doing was me, in #11838.

While for some people it seems like a good idea, Some people use the Term Description for something useful, and wouldnt expect that to flow to "Something" in the other taxonomy. It becomes more of an issue when you start utilising custom taxonomies where plugins expect to be able to delete their taxonomies terms (without modifying for example, the users categories)

[jfarthing84]

Well, the term description is within the taxonomy, so that wouldn't flow over. I realize that someone may want to change the slug for one of them and manually have different slugs, and if it were shared, this could not be. However, maybe this should be optional.

[scribu]

Replying to jfarthing84:

Well, the term description is within the taxonomy, so that wouldn't flow over. I realize that someone may want to change the slug for one of them and manually have different slugs, and if it were shared, this could not be. However, maybe this should be optional.

I agree. If you force the slug to be unique across all terms, then why keep the wp_terms table at all? You might as well move the slug to wp_term_taxonomy.

[scribu]

Related: #12911 (jfarthing84: if that was really what you were after, please close this one as a duplicate)