Default category not checked when composing new post

[alexkingorg]

I may be missing something, but I'm not seeing my default category checked when composing a new post in WP 2.1 (trunk).

Tracking back from the 'dropdown_categories' in edit-form-advanced, I see a call to 'write_nested_categories' which passes in the array result of 'get_nested_categories'. So assuming I'm reading this right, the category stuff should be set in 'get_nested_categories'.

In 'get_nested_categories', I see a query to get categories for the post, but no call to 'get_option('default_category')' to set the default category - instead it is set to the $default argument which is never populated in this chain. It *is* populated for links:

wp-admin/edit-link-form.php:46: <ul id="categorychecklist"><?php dropdown_link_categories(get_option('default_link_category')); ?></ul>

This seems like a bug to me, but the chain is deep and I don't know the ins and outs of the admin logic so I'm not sure exactly at what level it needs to be fixed.

[zamoose]

Alex:
This behavior is intentional. Check #4311.

[zamoose]

Make that ​Changeset 4311

[foolswisdom]

Hi alexkingorg,

If I understand correctly this seems to be the desired behavior based on ticket:2938.

It seems that both this and the previous behavior have some awkwardness, maybe there design issue has another solution.

[markjaquith]

Intentional behavior. Many people regard the default category as something that should only be checked if no other category is selected, not as something that should always be checked. A quick save with no category set will set the default category.

As always, open to arguments why this is a bad idea, but I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from people who were tired of having to uncheck "Uncategorized" every time they published a post.

[alexkingorg]

Better put something in the release notes about this, as an existing user this seems like it's "broken".

[alexkingorg]

Perhaps add something to the "Default post category:" text saying "this is used if no categories are selected", or similar.