[Mediawiki-l] Category page name sort logic.

[Platonides]

Michael Daly wrote:
> I noticed this on Wikipedia and assume it's a generic MW thing.
> 
> In a category of persons, I see the list of articles where some persons 
> are listed under the first letter of their first name and others by 
> their last name.  E.g.:
> 
> A
> John Adams
> 
> B
> Barney Rubble
> 
> I looked at the [[category:..]] statements in the articles and couldn't 
> see anything that could explain it.  How does it decide whether to use 
> first or last name and how does it know it's a name of a person and not 
> just a two-word article name?
> 
> Mike

You use [[Category:Foo]] to list article X sorted by key X, and 
[[Category:Foo|Y]] to have it sorted by key Y.
You can also use {{DEFAULTSORT:Z}} to have categories where no sort key 
have been specified sorted by key Z.
That's the method used on [[John Adams]]

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Magic_word#Miscellany