i think the tags are more for site search and i see is now search by #username now instead off tag search 
the description is for seo 
the description is the image alt tag 
that has not been fixed by making a default description ie a photo by username 
or make the description mandatory the photo wont upload without a description

because any photo uploaded without a description breaks google/ bing and every webmaster guidelines by not having an alt tag  

well guidelines or no guidelines my site is number 3 on google search for our niche buy the old tag system I will look to see if the alt tags are actually working as you say but in any case you now have to tag each photo separately which makes uploading in bulk much longer and more of a task 

You can tag your photo in the description #sometag

ok but doesnt work with the old tags man this is no good now we have to go retag thousands of photos why do this to us I know its moving forward but that is a crazy amount of reworking we  now have to do

We'll release an update for photo plugin, which will convert all old tags into new ones and add them into description. Update will be available soon. 

there are also no way to go to a url for just certain images anymore say I want to find all images labeled #oxwall I can search them but I will no longer be able to link directly to a url for my users as I said before google ranks us highly for this I guess I will use the old plugin

Do you mean categorize photos by tags and post that url somewhere?

correct

Well, you can click on the tag in the description of the image,  for example #oxwall, you'll get the url and all images under that tag. 

i think is way better to put the tags back in because what user is going to put #sometag in the description 

I'm sorry Tammy I don't follow you, what user is going to do?

any user of any oxwall site who uploads a photo will not put #sometag in the description 

at lease with tags some use them

i found more ppl will put a tag in a photo and leave the description empty 
thats why i have asked if they can make description mandatory 

This is a custom code modification

making it not upload the photo without a description should not be a custom code modification
it should be part of the script or 
at least have a default descripton ie

photo by (username)

everybody can have their own opinion, make a suggestion on uservoice for us to consider it in the future releases. 

yes but uservoice takes too long and not everyone is using it most on here rather not even waste time over there even when some things get a lot of votes they get turned down why take away features that worked great why fix something that wasnt broken i understand the new photo layout is awesome but now you have taken away a great tool we were using that never once had a complaint

I have been suing this plugin for photo tagging. http://www.oxwall.org/store/item/682
Is there another way? 

How do you tag someone in a post? 

No, this is a custom plugin development. 

i have mod the @autocomplete pligin so it tages the user and send notification 
but the plugin conflicts with the photo drag and drop click to add photos 
and that i can not fix