Bug overview description.
When attempting to suggest a tag alias for gibbons to julien_(artist), I get an error message saying that gibbons is already aliased to something (it is not).
What part(s) of the site page(s) are affected?
/tag_alias/new
What is the expected behavior?
A new thread is created.
What actual behavior is given instead?
The forum is shown with an error message on top
Time of incident (if applicable).
11/13/2019 11:40 P.M. EST
Can you reproduce the bug every time?
I tried it a few times with the same pair of tags as input (I would try different tags, but I don't want to fill the forum with test posts). It did the same thing every time.
What steps did you take to replicate this bug?
1. Go to /tag_alias/new
2. Type 'gibbons' (no quotes ofc) in the 'tag' field
3. Type 'julien_(artist)' in the 'Alias To' field
4. Type something in the 'reason' field (not sure if this is necessary, but I did try it with a couple different things)
5. Press Submit
Errors or other messages returned (if any).
"Error: gibbons is already aliased to something"

Gibbons currently has an alias request pending. That's why you can't suggest an alias, the pending alias prevents your suggestion.

Siral_Exan said:
Gibbons currently has an alias request pending. That's why you can't suggest an alias, the pending alias prevents your suggestion.

It looks like that request was approved, though. It shows up on the tag aliases page and works when searching. As far as I can tell, although warmbodies is aliased to gibbons, gibbons itself isn't aliased to anything.

Are multi-step aliases allowed, e.g. warmbodies -> gibbons -> julien_(artist)? If that's the only problem, then I think the error message is inaccurate.

"Multi-step" aliases aren't allowed. I misspoke on pending, I meant to explain that the alias is preventing you from suggesting another one from an already aliased tag. One of the 3 tags has to be used and the other 2 aliased, though sometimes glitches or whatnot occur that cause aliased tags to appear to be tagged.

The message is accurate. Warmbodies is aliased to Gibbons, so you couldn't suggest an alias from Gibbons to Julien_(artist). But you can suggest an alias from Julien_(artist) to Gibbons.