My comment is that if something like this was implemented, we’d immediately see people complaining about being prompted all the time for a category, and why can’t WordPress set a default one for them?
Seriously, the suggestion has been made before. And it’s not an either/or issue, since WordPress still publishes the post to the default category if none are checked. One could custom code the post editing page, removing the default category selection and adding a bit of javascript for an alert.
When editing is working again on the Codex, you might want to put your suggestion up on the page for 1.6. If it’s not there already:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_1.6
I’ve been searching this topic for a while now and I’m wondering… could one remove the automatically checked box for the default category in the admin page without disabling the default category function (i.e. the line in post.php that sets a category if none are checked)?
