By emmeade on

I'm confused about what the Edit terms in [vocabulary] taxonomy permission does. I thought it would limit a user's access to a vocabulary but I've run the following tests and that has not been the result.

Here are the steps taken:
Go to People > Permissions > Taxonomy
Tick Edit terms in [Category] for role News Editor
Tick Delete terms in [Category] for role News Editor
Save Permissions
Logout
Login as News Editor
Click Structure in toolbar > Receive message: You do not have any administrative items.

So log back in as Administrator
Go to People > Permissions > Taxonomy
Tick Administer vocabularies and terms for role News Editor
(left Edit/Delete permissions from previous test ticked as well)
Save Permissions
Logout
Login as News Editor
Click Structure in Toolbar (Taxonomy is listed as an option)
Click Taxonomy
See list with all vocabularies and am able to edit all of them!

I also added term reference fields with the Autocomplete term widget to a content type and this permission had no effect on that either.

So what is the purpose of the "Edit terms in" permission if it does not restrict editing on the Taxonomy page? Is this a bug?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

magicmyth’s picture

magicmyth commented

I'm also curious about this.
I want to be able to allow some groups to edit terms under specific vocabularies but not delete any. Right now it seems you either give a user complete control over Taxonomy or none at all. Whats the point of a "Edit terms in vocabulary" if it gives the user no additional power to edit a term and does not have any affect on a user with "Administer vocabularies and terms"?

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

I've been confused about this as well. I believe these permissions are meant to be used specifically with a tag type taxonomy. Setting a taxonomy field to tag type will let a user add new terms on the fly from the node edit form. These tags will be listed at the bottom of the node as links to the term page. Once on the term page, the user can then edit the term using the edit tab at the top just like as if they were on a node.

Personally, I very rarely use taxonomy in this manner unless setting up a blog. I'm more often using a vocabulary as a structured categorization, and I'm generally not outputting tag links at the bottom of every node. In this situation these permission settings become much less useful.

The module Taxonomy Term Lock handled this situation quite well for Drupal 6. However, there is currently no Drupal 7 version.

http://drupal.org/project/term_lock

renenee’s picture

renenee commented

Add me to the list of confused. This seems like a bug to me ...

joelstein’s picture

joelstein commented

There's a discussion in the Drupal queue about this, too. Weigh in there to get it changed in core.

#1038330: Allow specific vocabulary permissions to work on vocabulary admin pages

ericb1021’s picture

ericb1021 commented

I found that the Edit and Delete permissions still do work if you create a View.

You can mimic the default taxonomy admin page by making a view with the taxonomy term name and an edit link. Drupal will obey the users role to view, edit, and delete terms with this approach.

Then for site users, you can add a link directly the the new dashboard in a shortcut menu, and the site users will never know of the work around!

@joelstein, thanks for providing the link to the discussion on this.

Hope this helps.

dahousecat’s picture

dahousecat commented

This module is meant to fix this behavior: https://drupal.org/project/taxonomy_access_fix