[WikiEN-l] Name order in alpha lists (was Re: Problems with Susan Mason)

On Thu, 2003-03-06 at 23:44, james duffy wrote: While there is a certain temptation to revert anything Lir (by any name) does on principle, this isn't a Lir issue at all but a general one. Long lists of names by alphabetical order *are* more easily scanned visually if presented in "Last, First" / "Family Personal" order. This is primarily because this exposes the sort order in the vertical alignment: Fa Lihai Fassbinder, Uter Fiddlesticks, Jane Fizzlesticks, Bob Fizzickston, Kelly Fong Liuchang Fottburton, Manny Fotzsmith, Wigglesworth Framsmackle, Otis is a much easier list to look through than: Fa Lihai Uter Fassbinder Jane Fiddlesticks Bob Fizzlesticks Kelly Fizzickston Fong Liuchang Manny Fottburton Wigglesworth Fotzsmith Otis Framsmackle though about as good might be: Fa Lihai Uter Fassbinder Jane Fiddlesticks Bob Fizzlesticks Kelly Fizzickston Font Liuchang Manny Fottburton Wigglesworth Fotzsmith Otis Framsmackle which would require some ugly table code. Now, most links are in natural name order, which is as it should be -- most mentions of people are going to be in context, not in lists; natural name order is most appropriate for titles, and most comfortable for most linking, and therefore that is how articles on people are titled. For the occasional alphabetical lists where one might want to present Last, First order for western names, that means that the code looks like: *[[Jane Fiddlesticks|Fiddlesticks, Jane]] etc. This is trivially achievable by simple scripts or regexps in 99% of cases for those who are too lazy to do it by hand, though they need to be checked for exceptions. Or, one could make a crapload of redirects -- again, either these need to be maintained by hand or semiautomated with a script. They would very rarely be used except in alphabetical lists (including perhaps the alpha index at Special:Allpages). Alternately, proposed categorization schemes could be used to produce most such categorical lists programmatically. A category relation could be defined with an inherent sortable and/or displayable variant, allowing automatic generation of lists in name-sensitive alpha order, rank order by population, age, area, etc. This would save hand-coding. -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)