Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Search/Sort search results by date

Random proposal ►◄ Search  The survey has concluded. Here are the results!

Sort search results by date

• Problem: Currently, the search results appear in random order and there is no option to sort them by date (i.e. most recent first). This is a problem especially with administrative noticeboards that have hundreds of archive pages. For example, see this search result of the English Wikipedia's AN/I: [1]
• Who would benefit: Everyone.
• Proposed solution: Enable sorting by date. Alternatively, simply bringing in the search results by most recent first would help also.
• More comments:
• Phabricator tickets: T18237, T195071, T40403
• Proposer: Pudeo (talk) 13:50, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

I tried the Wikipedia's AN/I link above with mw:Help:CirrusSearch#Prefer-recent as [2], but that order is still confusing. Meh. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 22:36, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

A sort by function would be very nice. Toasted Meter (talk) 02:25, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

@Pudeo: The technical ground work for this is already done. See ANI sorted by last edit ascending. I propose rewording this proposal and request to expose this functionality with the User interface. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:08, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

My wish: Possibilities to sort search results not only by date, but also alphabetically by filename and/or uploader/author. JopkeB (talk) 10:04, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

@JopkeB: If you have additional requests, please create separate tickets as well. That is probably the best way to get attention for them. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:08, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

• Hello, the proposal says "sort them by date (i.e. most recent first)". Actually, there are multiple dates of interest: first edit, last edit, and content's date (like the date of an event). --NaBUru38 (talk) 19:13, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

You can currently sort by last edit date (among other options, see ApiSandbox for the search query for the full set of options): https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/?search=survey&fulltext=1&sort=last_edit_desc Sorting by first edit is currently populating in the search indexes, but will be available in december or january. EBernhardson (WMF) (talk) 15:30, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Voting

•  Support Just "expose this functionality with the User interface" would be quite useful. Galobtter (talk) 19:16, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support XXBlackburnXx (talk) 20:18, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support MrX (talk) 01:49, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Natureium (talk) 02:55, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support It is definately one of the features that needs to be integrated into the current (almost useless) search tool. Stevenmitchell (talk) 03:06, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 (talk) 09:03, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support More sorting options in general (alphabetic, by the time of last edit) would be welcome. stjn^[ru] 09:28, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support RStehn (talk) 13:27, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Expose this in the front-end, please. Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 15:18, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Yilku1 (talk) 17:17, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support JAn Dudík (talk) 20:31, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support —Thanks for the fish! ^{talk•contribs} 20:40, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support MULTI-sort, on ANY set of attributes (with show/hide results-groups) Wikicat (talk) 20:48, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Anything to get the results in the same order each time the query is run, so you know which ones you have looked at. Keith D (talk) 22:59, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support --Hadibe (talk) 23:42, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support AHeneen (talk) 05:58, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Zabia (talk) 10:05, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Ainali (talk) 12:15, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:31, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Sebastian Wallroth (talk) 13:16, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Timeshifter (talk) 14:41, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support ... with additional sort keys (alphabetical, etc). Bruce1ee (talk) 15:28, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support — Draceane ^talk_contrib. 17:14, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support ~ Amory (u • t • c) 17:23, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support JackPotte (talk) 22:20, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Stryn (talk) 22:39, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Louisana (talk) 09:00, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:08, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Vort (talk) 06:07, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Aarkstore (talk) 09:11, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Definitely. At the moment, for any search term which brings up a significant number of results (e.g. a search for a particular user's name in talk archives) the quasi-random ordering makes the search function unusable. Iridescent (talk) 10:23, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Vulphere 13:15, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support → «« Man77 »» ^[de] 13:35, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Magalia (talk) 21:29, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 22:54, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support JopkeB (talk) 08:20, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support β₁₆ - (talk) 09:52, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Novak Watchmen (talk) 13:53, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support BugWarp (talk) 15:44, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Jack who built the house (talk) 18:30, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Nihlus 22:45, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Krinkle (talk) 03:08, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support The ideal magic version would be to sort by the date the targeted content was added, but that's probably technically unfeasible. The last-edit-date seems like an obvious thing to sort by, but it practice it tends to be worthless. Old content may get trivial maintenance edits, which effectively randomizes the the last-edit-date. For most use cases, I think the page-creation date is the most reliable indicator to search content by date. Page creation date works extremely well for discussion archive pages, and for temporary workflow pages such as deletion discussions. Alsee (talk) 05:27, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support No such user (talk) 19:28, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Mike Linksvayer (talk) 17:54, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support NaBUru38 (talk) 18:29, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Matěj Suchánek (talk) 09:35, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Hmxhmx 11:13, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Ghilt (talk) 13:16, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Arne (Amjaabc) (talk) 08:58, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support By erdo can • TLK 09:10, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:12, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support IKhitron (talk) 19:46, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support HeinrichStuerzl (talk) 21:09, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Ranjithsiji (talk) 22:47, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support x100 — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 02:46, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Izno (talk) 01:00, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Borys Kozielski (talk) 10:20, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Toasted Meter (talk) 13:51, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support YFdyh000 (talk) 17:42, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Ciao • Bestoernesto • ✉ 01:09, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Daniel Case (talk) 03:18, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Ldorfman (talk) 20:48, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support NicoScribe (talk) 11:27, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Support adding more sorting options in any reasonable way — NickK (talk) 15:38, 30 November 2018 (UTC)