The docs say backlinks are sorted by titles (
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Backlinks .... "Ordered by linking page
title"). I noticed that this is partially true. So while most of them look
like sorted alphabetically, usually there are sections at the end of the
list when there are plenty items that are not. So they look like they added
later not obeying the sorting rule. The example is the article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology where the first page of "What links
here" ( non-redirect articles) contains non-ordered items. Is this
expected?
But apart from figuring out whether there's a bug or not, another thought
is that the alphabetical sort (if it works) is controversial since in any
form of presentation, A-items are prime visible entities, while Z-items
tend to be obscured if the list is long. So is it possible to implement
other kind of sort, for example, something like PageRank for backlinks, so
the links are sorted by the number of links coming to them? Sure There is a
technical side (whether the structure of the database will allow this) and
probably legal (I hope Larry Page won't mind and won't sue WikiMedia for
this)
I consider backlinks important because they tend to have "see also" and
"category" flavor in them, so just by looking at a partial list, I acquire
additional knowledge and expectancy.
Thanks,
Max