Sidebar categories are out of order for anonymous users

Contribute Bug

AI-generated summary

Users report that sidebar categories appear in different orders for anonymous versus logged-in users: on desktop, anonymous users see categories in selection order (e.g., Documentation, Announcements, Community), while mobile and logged-in users see them alphabetically. This inconsistency is confirmed as a bug by mcwumbly and jesus2099, who note it only affects anonymous visitors. Screenshots from awesomerobot and Mr.X_Mr.X illustrate the issue. Some users, like Mr.X_Mr.X, suggest making the anonymous UX configurable, while Chandra prefers the standard (non-alphabetical) order. tgxworld has submitted a fix to enforce alphabetical sorting for anonymous users, matching the logged-in experience, and will auto-close the topic in a week. Further discussion on category sorting should occur in a new or existing topic.

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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?

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Try out the new sidebar and notification menus!
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That’d be a bug, but I’m not seeing it. If you find a way to reproduce it, let us know!

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On desktop the categories on the meta sidebar are

Documentation
Announcements
Community

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

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4

Can you share a screenshot of this incorrect ordering?

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

IMG_164288F632AE-1
IMG_164288F632AE-11284Ă—2778 171 KB

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IMG_20220921_202326__01
IMG_20220921_202326__011187Ă—709 209 KB

Firefox 104.0.2 on Ubuntu

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

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

Screenshot_2022-09-21-19-45-41-972_com.kiwibrowser.browser
Screenshot_2022-09-21-19-45-41-972_com.kiwibrowser.browser720Ă—1520 142 KB

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

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

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

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

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

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/18339

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 :heart_eyes_cat:

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This topic was automatically closed after 7 days. New replies are no longer allowed.