859398 - Tags list on pages should be alphabetical

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

What feature should be changed? Please provide the URL of the feature if possible.
==================================================================================
Currently, it appears that the list of tags at the bottom of article pages are in the order they were entered by the user. Since users can't be relied on to type them in any particular order (I certainly don't), this is no better than "random order."

We need to put them in some sort of order. Alphabetical can be automated at least, even if it's not as useful as a weighted order of some kind. But weighted order is not really feasible.

What problems would this solve?
===============================
It would make the tag lists less odd looking, especially when flipping among related pages whose tags wind up in wildly different orders for no obvious reason.

Who would use this?
===================
Everyone.

What would users see?
=====================
A nice, logically sorted tag list.

What would users do? What would happen as a result?
===================================================
Nothing.

Is there anything else we should know?
======================================

Comment 1

[David Walsh :davidwalsh]

I very weakly disagree with this because tags should be in order of importance.  Just my thought.  I know users can do whatever they'd like, but I'm thinking that the majority of docs are created by us and we can at least start them correctly.

Comment 2

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

Importance order sounds great but isn't practical. Given that we have no system for suggesting tags, autocomplete, or proper maintenance of available tags, there's no way to keep up with what the possible tags are. Since you have to type them from memory, you're never going to remember them in the same order every time, hence the essential randomness of tag order right now.

We should remember the tag order as entered, and work toward a proper tag management solution, but in the meantime, displaying tags in alphabetical order would sure look better than the current mishmash.

Comment 3

[John Karahalis [:openjck]]

I could go either way on this. Alphabetical order would make it easier for readers to find the tag they are looking for, but then again authors might define their own orders that make more sense (for example, listing JavaScript before Ajax).

I lean slightly in favor of alphabetical order.

Comment 4

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

We've had a good discussion about this in IRC and here's my proposal:

Switch to alphabetical order

BUT

Work on moving toward a more orderly category system with predefined categories, category autocomplete, and suggested categories based on page path and/or content. This would really help. Indeed, we could even help auto-weight categories based on usage of terms in the content, eventually. Talk about neato.

Comment 5

[MDN Team (:mdn-dev)]

Commits pushed to master at https://github.com/mozilla/kuma

https://github.com/mozilla/kuma/commit/c9d392f8cbbc2846638f1e41b9af14b33fc02cf6
Fix bug 859398: Sort tag list alphabetically

https://github.com/mozilla/kuma/commit/84d9c9cb03276786faa910c3caa4de175c7b01b6
Merge pull request #3208 from Elchi3/bug859398

Fix bug 859398: Sort tag list alphabetically