Sort topics (within category) in alphabetical order by default

Soporte
1

I know that the issue has been discussed before and some progress has been made (and that many disagree that alphabetic sorting on topic title is useful), but to me it is. I am experimenting with Discourse to see if I can use it to replace NeuroDSS.com which contains neurosurgical classification and grading systems. The option that users can add their own classifications (and more) and discuss them on site is a great side benefit. Primarily however, I want users to go to categories easily and find the content they are looking for.

I managed to get the categories view first when accessing NeuroMind.cc, and modified @sam’s Minimal Topic List Design to allow the user to sort topics in alphabetical order by changing this piece in the header :

<script type='text/x-handlebars' data-template-name='topic-list-header.raw'>
    {{raw "topic-list-header-column" sortable='true' order='topic.title' name='topic.title'}}

This works, but the user still has to perform the sorting manually. How can this be done as a default setting when the category is opened?

Side note: I also changed

{{raw "topic-list-header-column" sortable='true' number='true' order='replies' forceName='Replies'}}

(in the original post it said order='posts' and it gave some side effects, guess that is a typo)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Pieter

2

I think if you “need” to sort by title there is something wrong with your approach. As in, you should be using categories or tags for that information rather than embedding it in the title as a string.

3

That depends, I guess… If someone wants to “browse” through a certain category it may be helpful if the content is sorted. Otherwise a topic may be at a different position everytime.

I realize this is not the main purpose of Discourse, but to me the lack of it is currently holding me back of proceeding. Fortunately you also offer categories as JSON in which I can do sorting to create some mobile version myself, but I prefer not to. :wink:

4

It would probably be easy enough to sort by title except for one problem - endless scroll.

So do an alpha sort in batches of 30?

Wouldn’t it be better to use Search?

5

Depends… for very large categories, yes. But if a specific category is restricted regarding adding new content, no.

6

We have a category explaining terms; a dictionary. Here alphabetic sorting would be handy to quickly scroll to the right term.
Why is endless scrolling a problem…? Couldn’t you just start with ‘A’ and load ‘B’ as the user scrolls down?

Or is the problem that the list can’t be made because to the browser not all topics are known yet, before the user scroll down?

7

I think using Tags would be the far easier way to present alphabetically grouped lists, else The Search feature.

8

It looks like this idea isn’t going to happen but just to share my use case - we have voting enabled for topics & want to enable users to vote for the stocks that they’d like us to add to our service so that they can invest in them (we’re a stockbroker).

The names of each topic within the dedicated category is the name of the stock.

Unless I’m missing something, it seems like the most useful way to order the list, within the category view, would be in alphabetical order, to make finding stocks that others have already requested easier.

I don’t think Tags would be right for this, as we’d only use each Tag once - one Tag for each of the stocks. And as we all know, a large proportion of users don’t use search.

9

My use case: One of the categories in my Discourse is a User Guide for a website. In the User Guide category I have Topics like “About”, “Getting Started”, “Searching”, etc. These Topics should be ordered in a specific way, rather than by last update or some other metric. If I could sort the Topics alphabetically, I could rename them to “1. About”, “2. Getting Started”, etc.

10

¿Podemos por favor tener esto ya? Ha habido muchas solicitudes con diversos usos explicados que afectan a las personas. Entiendo toda la filosofía de fomentar buenas prácticas, pero esto ha generado al menos 4 temas de los que tengo conocimiento y muchas respuestas pidiéndolo… argumentar que lo estamos haciendo mal es, en cierto modo, decirnos que todos somos estúpidos en este punto :slight_smile:

Al menos, por favor, permitan hacerlo con cadenas de consulta en la URL (?sort=title) para no perder tiempo en extras de la interfaz gráfica, pero por favor no se opongan hasta el punto de casi impedirlo.

No lo necesito de forma predeterminada. Solo quiero poder hacerlo.

En mi caso, agregamos números enteros a los títulos de los mensajes como un “rango”, que cambiamos con el tiempo a medida que revisamos la importancia del tema y añadimos nuevos temas. Los números enteros no son necesariamente consecutivos y su valor también importa. Es un foro privado donde cada tema es una pieza de información (importante), de la cual necesitamos seleccionar las mejores N como último paso. El proceso de revisión del rango requiere verlos todos en una sola página, ver también el número entero, luego volver a ordenar, revisar de nuevo, y así sucesivamente, mientras seguimos trabajando y añadiendo temas con diversos rangos entre los rangos existentes.

No podemos usar etiquetas ni otra categorización fea, porque eso eliminaría un subconjunto de títulos de la vista. La búsqueda tampoco ayuda.

Actualmente copiamos y pegamos los títulos en Excel y hacemos todo allí, luego volvemos y volvemos a editar, etc… lo cual es estúpido. Discourse debería tener ordenamiento por título. Es bastante básico.

p.p.s. Hasta donde sé, existen:

11

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