Modifying an existing tag ineffective (zotero 5.0b)

Cbhihe

[Zotero 5.0b on FF 52.0.1 with LO 5.3.2.2 on Ubuntu 14.04.5]
Hello,
I am building my bibliographical db as I go reading papers. Each referenced object is given tags. But sometimes I give the object a "faulty" tag and realize it days later. E.g. I sometimes capitalized o pluralized a tag or simply misspelled it.
Pbm: Correcting it does not seem so easy.
-Going to each individual db object using the bad tag entry and changing the tag or erasing the tag from that entry and creating a new, correctly spelled one does not seem to help. E.g. If I have a tag "cLuster" that needs to be changed to "cluster", I just cannot find a way to do that.
- Thinking that maybe tags are case insensitive, I tried changing "cLuster" to "clusterAAA" to "cluster" (yes, in 2 steps); no dice...
I am obviously missing something here. Can someone give me a nudge in the right direction ? Cheers, -ced

bwiernik

Right click on the tag in the tag selector and choose Rename Tag. You can change the tag as you like.

Cbhihe

@bwiernik: Thank you. I had not noticed the contextual menu on right click for tags. Very useful.
However there definitely seems to be a problem (at least for me). I make the required changes and as soon as I sync with my Zotero online db, all spelling changes are reverted. I end up with exactly the same as before. Annoying.

When I sync my local db and its online replica, can I force changes made in my local db onto the replicated db online ?
If so, how do I do that ?

Cbhihe

@bwiernik: I also checked that the same behavior occurs when trying to change tags' spelling directly on https://forums.zotero.org. In any db referenced object, you can delete a tag and create a new one, e.g. (i) delete tag "cLuster", (ii) create tag "cluster", but Zotero will not accept the change. Or rather, it will show the changed tag for a few seconds before it reverts to the old tag.
Is there a way out of this ?

bwiernik

This sounds like it is a bug. I think I have seen a similar report recently. Can you give the exact version of the Zotero beta you are using? And submit an Error Report and post the ID in this thread (https://www.zotero.org/support/reporting_problems)? Also, submit a debug log for a change to a tag spelling and then being reverted after a sync and post the ID in this thread (https://www.zotero.org/support/debug_output).

Cbhihe

@bwiernik. there you go.

Report ID: 1612340099

Description:

1) Boot Ubuntu 14.04.5 with Firefox 52.0.2 (64-bit) and Zotero 5.0-beta.177+d8fed09 as auto-start applications.

2) In Zotero's tag selector (lower left pane) right-click on a tag to modify it, e.g.: "DataFlow" modified to "dataflow" or anything else really. (It does not matter what the result of the modification is).

3) See how the tag is correctly modified in the tag selection pane as well as for all records w/ that tag.

4) See how the tag modification is _reverted_ by Zotero, either automatically after 1 to 10 seconds, or immediately if you hit the Sync button (circular green arrow at top right of Zotero pane).

5) During the short time that the tag stays modified, the online db replica is left unchanged. After syncing manually, tag modifs are reverted and the online db stays unmodified.

6) Deleting/creating a tag in the Zotero pane behaves normally. Tag deletion/creation is correctly propagated to db replica online. Only tag modification seems to be impaired.

=====
Notes:
=====
This may be important, but I can't know for sure.

1) I don't know how Zotero communicate with the online db repo. If it does so through FF, I should mention that my version of FF is Tor-ified and exit note selection is made through SelekTor. Do these proxied comm protocols sit well with Zotero ?
To begin troubleshooting this, I disabled SelekTor entirely and went through some tag editing. The same buggy behavior occurs with no outgoing communication proxy.

2) I also use a local proxy for incoming http (tcp) and https traffic, called Privoxy. Privoxy is a filter-based, pattern recognition, traffic-sifting proxy. In my opinion it should not interfere with Zotero syncing, but again I can't be sure.