Assuming that it is technically possible to import tags from Bitwiggers’ pages to the Presets & Clips topics… and assuming that we want to import them… We should discuss some details.
Bitwiggers have different fields that could be translated as tags here.
- Tags
- Device
- VSTs
- Category
We should probably use tag groups anyway, to keep Bitwiggers’ tags separated from the rest. Imagine that we would use the #grid plain tag, which currently has 13 entries only. We would just flood it with hundreds of presets.
An advantage of tag groups is that its use can be limited to specific user groups and categories. This would prevent that unaware users just add the Bitwiggers’ tags to topics under i.e. #features .
If we just want to replicate Bitwiggers’ tag structure, we could have one group for each of the types listed above (tags, device…). Again, if this is technically possible at all.
Well, herein we get into the details of Discourse’s APIs which are… very weird. I can’t determine their reason for making them this way, but it’s just not possible to do a lot of things, and what makes it weird is that you can do a lot of related things to what you might want to do; I can’t imagine very many uses of their APIs given the missing features. I’m also wondering how their own UI does everything it needs to do, because if they intended to expose any APIs, it would have made the most sense to have the UI exclusively use those APIs. It seems there must be undocumented APIs that only the UI is permitted to use. Anyways…
First, looking at this from the Tag angle, you simply can’t make Tags! You can make Tag Groups, only providing their Name, and you can update Tag Groups, only their Name. You can then retrieve those Tag Groups, with all of their details, like the Tags within them, but there’s no way to change any of their details. And you can also retrieve Tags or a Tag (more on that later). What’s the use of just spawning a Tag Group with a given Name? There’s literally nothing else you can do with that in any other API.
So what do you do with Tags other than apply them to Topics? From the Topic angle, Tags don’t exist at all! They aren’t even visible when retrieving a Topic, thus they’re not able to be used to Create or Edit a Topic either. Wild!
To understand the relationship further, we have to go back to Tags. If you retrieve a single Tag, it will come with all of the Topics it’s applied to, with all of their details. This is extremely backwards, in my opinion. The Topic should contain the list of Tags that it references (very small), not the Tag fully containing every Topic that uses it (extremely large). The other place Tags appear, which makes sense, is during a Search for Topics.
Unfortunately, it seems that every required step is missing:
- Identify a Topic based on the URL it’s embedded on. An old demonstration of Embeds includes this functionality, but it seems to have been removed since I can’t access it on this installation.
- Create/Find Tags within a Group. The APIs don’t exist at all.
- Update a Topic to adjust the Tags. The only possible Topic update is its Title and Category; the only possible Post update is its visible body.
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Thank you so much for checking this information and making sense out of it. Well, I guess this simplifies things. 
If there is no way to tag hundreds of posts manually, then perhaps we can use plain tags to allow anyone to tag presets and clips manually.
I could create the missing tags, so they are already available in case anyone wants to use them. Questions about taxonomy:
- Are “Tags” and/or “Category” mirroring the items listed in Bitwig’s browser?
- Can you share the list of Tags and VSTs that you are using (if you think it is a good idea to just replicate them here)?
@somethingtohide I’ll just go ahead and start adding tags to new & recent presets whenever I get bored.
EDIT: Ok, now I’m seeing that these tags seems to be freeform and not limited by those shown in Bitwig’s browser. I’m not sure what to do with this, feedback welcome.
Even Bitwig’s are Freeform those checkboxes are simply quick-add common Tags, but above them is a text-input where you can do anything. Everything from Bitwiggers actually comes from Bitwig, I purposefully don’t allow (outside of the Reviews and attaching of extra Media) additional data or corrections.
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