Discussion: Alphabetical Vs. Chronological Order for Examples

In general, I feel that the casual reader would rather have the works alphabetized than in order-added, and they are the supposed end-user here; if this site is to be run for the benefit of its contributors over its readers, it diminishes the point of what we're doing here.

Editing here is supposed to be fun, sure, but when it comes ahead of giving users of our content a good experience, I don't agree.

However, I do find myself wondering if in the long run some kind of ordered database to generate work and trope pages would work better than free-form Wiki text. Then it'd be easy — work entries on trope pages and trope entries on work pages would be easy to track individually.

I like the idea of an eventual entry management system, but I'm guessing it's on the back burner for a while.

Anyway, going behind someone and removing all the alphabetizing seems like a bad idea. I also think alphabetizing is a very good thing for large pages, but we don't have nearly as many of those.

Holy List Mode Batman! I gotta say, if I were in a browsing mood (just gently drifting and reading, rather than in a mood to find and edit) I would be hitting my back button at that page (or possibly the "random" button, god bless Eddie for the random page button, it makes reading this site so much more fun). It just looks unfriendly, and no fun to read. It's like a checklist of stuff, if I want a checklist I can get that at work.

I honestly think it should be alphabetical. There is NO Ctrl+F functionality on the Wii. There are probably some smart phones that don't have the function as well.

Do you hit the back button too if you see a work page?

If I saw the page I would be glad, that I am able to find the examples I searching for easy, and that the uniform look makes the page look more professional.

edited 23rd Aug '11 8:09:41 AM by Osmium

I vastly prefer alphabetically ordered pages and would be thrilled if we adopted it as policy.

One of the the biggest things about alphabetized pages that hasn't been addressed yet is the upkeep. I just cleaned up a page that had, at some point in the past been alphabetized (Stock Shoutouts), and whoever alphabetized it never went back to keep it that way. It was a jumble.

All of you who are saying "Oh, yes, alphabetize!" — are you going to put your typing fingers where your mouth is? Are you going to still be keeping those pages alphabetized three months from now? a year from now?

Maddy, that's why I like the idea of making the example pages look like the trope list in work pages. It both makes it much more obvious that the page is alphabetized and it makes intuitive sense for new users.

Alphabetization crusaders unite! To the Trope Mobile!

I'm not fussed about it, but I do find duplicate examples more annoying than non-alphabetized lists.

I really like the look and functionality of the alphabetized page. I don't care enough (or think it's a big enough difference to make it necessarily worthwhile) to make it a huge project, but if that change was made, I'd be pretty happy about it. Assuming it continued to do its job of cutting down on duplicate examples.

And for the record, I'd try to do my part to keep it tidy. I wouldn't spend hours a day making sure it was perfect, but I'd try to keep an eye out and tidy it up, to try to keep the workload small each time.

edited 24th Aug '11 4:53:44 AM by Duckay

I'm not sure why you think spreading the standards on pages will get people to change their editing habits. My curating experience has not shown this.

Yeah, my experience hasn't shown it either.

Plus I feel like anyone with enough time to spend rearranging pages probably has enough time to spend doing one of the many other open projects instead that everyone's already agreed needs doing.

I tend to agree. This seems like a big fuss over what amounts to a non-issue in comparison to some of the other problems the wiki's facing. Personally, I don't really care one way or the other.

edited 24th Aug '11 5:44:57 AM by Willbyr

I do care, since sterile, dry, "professional" checklists are something I see more than enough of at work. Damned if I am going to stare at another one in my leisure time, and damned if I am going to upkeep yet another one only this time without even the tenuous benefit of actually getting paid for it. I like to read the breezy, informal, fun, examples list.

edited 24th Aug '11 5:50:18 AM by CrypticMirror

Well, that is just strange. How does a list in some rational order lose its fun? How about it is not fun if it isn't in some rational order? If the lack of order is distracting from the fun by causing duplicates and making it harder to find the parts of the fun a reader finds the most fun?

The loss of fun isn't from being in alphabetical order. It's from the "work: example" "work: example" "work: example" format.

At least, that's why I don't like the look of that page. I guess it's possible the others were, in fact, talking about the ordering itself as the problem.

Cryptic Mirror You still didn't answer my question: When you feel that bad about clearly structured and orderd lists, how are you able to look at work pages? Or do you avoid them completly?

I can understand the people saying, that starting to reorganize all pages to an alphabetical order is more effort than the benefits are worth. But if someone puts the effort in reorganizing a page in a clear structured way editors should respect this and add their example accordingly.

The only point I think we should start to encurage strongly is the Work:Description format. It makes the examples look neat and people searching for a certain work can do this easyer by just scrolling down the exaple list and looking at the first word. I know the work is already supposed to be somewere at the beginning of the example, but even a small word like "In" at the start of the sentence forces the reader to go from the fast "shape recognicing mode" to the slower "reading mode" (I hope it is clear what I want to say...) making it easyer to miss a entry. And additionally the hiding of a work in a pothole is impossible when using this format.

If they're just naming the example, that's not what we're proposing, that's something we try to fight.

Nobody in this thread talked about reducing the examples to just the name of the work. So why are you saying that?

"Loss of fun". Since when is your fun dependent on example sentence structure?

edited 24th Aug '11 9:12:08 AM by Fighteer

The fun inherent in reading something depends on the kind of writing. Sentence structure is an aspect of the kind of writing.

The fun writing is in the text of the example. The name of the show is just the name of the show.

Now I understand. I read example as description. A page consisting mainly of X Just X entrys will always look boring, no matter how the examples are structured.

edited 24th Aug '11 9:39:17 AM by Osmium