Release Notes May 5th 2022

I can see and understand the "if you have a lot of games and stay in closed/dead games then creation date ends up leaving you with mainly those filling the screen" argument. And if I'm being very honest with myself a portion of my feelings on the feature are 100% because it's a change from what it was. Perhaps "angry" was too strong a word, but it was definitely a frustration that hasn't diminished with the (albeit short) amount of time that's elapsed.

For me, the game age ordering just worked for my head and I'm struggling to come up with the words to explain why it does. Part of it is I like seeing the "journey" of games that I've been in/am in and having them in creation order did that. Sure, if I backfilled into a game I would suddenly get a game higher up in the list, but it still hit my head in a way like "ah yes, this is a legacy game that's been around a bit, very good." Beyond that, I now have dead games that I chose to stay in for some reason or the other peppered throughout my list rather than grouped together in one predictable place. Additionally, alphabetically sorting the list I dislike because it ends up leading to people doing weird things with names to impact the positioning of games (I've seen this all to often with other community lists where alphabetical sorts are a thing).

Given that, I like the suggestion vagueGM had about allowing players to reorder if they like (and I also understand the commentary on too many custom settings/options being there but I disagree fundamentally with the confusion side. Being locked out of customization of my experience is worlds more frustrating to me personally than the potential for someone else to be confused). If I could do the coding design of it, I would in a heartbeat. Unfortunately web dev isn't my area of knowledge so any attempt I'd make at it would be bloated and definitely not optimized in the slightest.

That is a good point.

I think I will place my vote for 'not alpha' though I fear this will be read as an endorsement of 'creation date'.

Hm, okay, I can see that. It's nothing I ever considered or find personally important. But interesting
I never had those grouped together anyway. Newer games died while older ones were still ongoing.
This is a solid argument against alpha-sorting that I never even considered.
Some people already started using emojis in game or thread titles to highlight them which I absolutely hate. I guess it's a danger that people will also game the sorting system by finding early-alphabet titles for their games...

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I still find alphabet sorting much more practical than sort-by-creation-date, but at least now I understand the other position 😄 Thanks!

That's a solid argument.

I prefer alpha sorting, but I can always write a script just for me. I'll change my vote to abstain.

Personally, the new game order has thrown me for a loop. I'd prefer how it was before, but only because I was used to it and we're creature of habits. I'll get used to it eventually, at least I hope so...

I liked sorting by date much more, for about the same reasons as Dramasailor. It gave me a fuzzy feeling to see old games which are still ongoing, and the list was like a visual representation of my time on this site, as cheesy as this sounds. :D It was also fun to join a game, see it atop the list and thus discover that it's way older than I expected.

That said, the only option I feel strongly about is to make sorting order a user choice - but that's not on the table unless a willing volunteer web developer comes along, so alas. I also wish we could at least sort bookmarked games, but I imagine that will be the same issue of no one to code it.

In the grand scheme of things it is a personal preference; if people voting date sorting are in minority, so be it. I can always just make a hyperlink list for myself, and sort it as I please. :P

These are the results:



A majority of the people who voted preferred alphabetical ordering, but nobody felt strongly about alphabetical ordering.

I do worry about the tyranny of the majority, so I don't know what to do now!

Thoughts?

While I did not feel strongly enough about it to vote, I do think there are more downsides to alpha than to creation date.

Neither make that page particularly useful to me, so I don't use it, so I don't have a real opinion.

I still vastly prefer alphabetical and the one downside I see to it (gaming the system) won't annoy me half as much as emojis do 😄

But I'll survive if we decide to go for creation date. I find that a really bad way of sorting and was happy about that change, but I've managed so far.

I am not used to it but probably will. I will not like alpha for this ever. If there is no desire to code in some kind of customization option so players interested in having a sort that works best for them, then I am kind of stuck with the community vote. I'd even support alpha by default with the option to make it how I want.

If I had the skillset to make it what vague had described earlier (allow players to set the order, even as a "buried" custom option for those driven enough to want it) I would in a heartbeat.

I would be interested to see the results of a poll for fixed sort vs ability to custom sort, because while the arguments against options are there, forum sorting isn't totally foreign as options.

I suspect everyone would agree that letting the user choose is the best option, but someone has to do the work to enable that. We can not expect others to do it for us.

Can you run the tampermonkey extension for Chrome?