Sidebar categories are out of order for anonymous users

[Mr.X_Mr.X (Mr X)]

@mcwumbly

We initially had it implemented this way but found it even more problematic in earlier testing. Part of the problem is that the UI for choosing things doesn’t allow you to easily reorder them. At some point, custom ordering may be on the table, but we need a better UX for that if we want to support it. For now, alphabetical felt like the better tradeoff.

Coming back to this, I noticed today that in desktop view the categories are listed in order of selection in the side bar settings. On mobile though they are in alphabetical order. Is this intended or a bug?

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

That’d be a bug, but I’m not seeing it. If you find a way to reproduce it, let us know!

[Mr.X_Mr.X (Mr X)]

On desktop the categories on the meta sidebar are

Documentation
Announcements
Community

Surely not alphabetical whole on mobile they are in alphabetical order.

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

Can you share a screenshot of this incorrect ordering?

[awesomerobot (Kris)]

I think it’s only for anonymous visitors; I can see it too

[Mr.X_Mr.X (Mr X)]

Firefox 104.0.2 on Ubuntu

Later edit: Yep, @awesomerobot just said it, in anonymous.

[jesus2099]

I see alphabetical order in Hamburg menu categories on Android 9 Kiwi Browser 105, logged in:

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

@jesus2099

logged in

yep, it’s fine when you’re logged in. just doesn’t work when you’re not (which we often refer to as “anonymous”).

[jesus2099]

From the topic, I was not sure which order was correct and which was not.
I understood the opposite, apparently.

[Mr.X_Mr.X (Mr X)]

Can’t we have this anonymous ux as a setting? Sometimes are fun.

[Chandra]

I would agree. The anonymous category order is following the standard category order as I would prefer that to alphabetical.

[tgxworld (Alan Tan)]

I have fix for now to just sort it alphabetically like how we do for a logged in user.

FIX: Sidebar categories for anonymous not being sorted by name

I’ve set this topic to auto close in a week. For discussions on how categories to be sorted do open another topic or contribute to an existing one.

As always, thank you for taking the time in providing us with feedback