Wikitable Sorting - Changing Sort Order is Broken

Question

When you make a wikitable and add a sort key to a cell as described on Wikipedia here, WikiTree ignores it and sorts by the contents of the cell (after stripping out tags).

For example, this cell will sort as text value "9th cousins" instead of as 09.0900 as the data-sort-value specified.

|data-sort-value=09.0900|[https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:Relationship&action=calculate&person1_name=Ryker-100&person2_name=Cooper-1 9th cousins]

Also, this cell will sort as the text value "George Abbott" instead of as "Abbott, George" as the data-sort-value specified.

|data-sort-value="Abbott, George"|[[Abbott-307|George Abbott]]

As a work-around, I had to trick the sorting function by adding a hidden span like this:

|data-sort-value=09.0900|<span style="display:none">09.0900</span>[https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:Relationship&action=calculate&person1_name=Ryker-100&person2_name=Cooper-1 9th cousins]

Can someone who can stick their hands in the inner workings of the Wiki part of WikiTree take a look at why this basic sorting feature is broken in WikiTree?

Comments

There are many features of wiki-markup that are implemented at Wikipedia that have not been enabled at WikiTree. The sort key functionality you describe apparently is one of them. The functionality doesn't work here because it doesn't exist here.

So this isn't a bug. Rather, it's a potential future improvement.

Answer 1

Hi, Richard --

Ellen is correct about some of the functionality you might find on Wikipedia not working here. We are using an older version of the wiki software, and the functionality you're referring to may not be included in our version, or it may just not be enabled.

However, I make sortable wiki tables all the time by using the class "wikitable sortable."

You just have to make sure that you don't have any stray spaces in your cells when you use that class or you'll get unpredictable sort results.

Here's an example of a sortable table I set up: My Cousin Table, and here are the parameters I used to create it:

{| class="wikitable sortable" border="1" cellpadding="4" width="100%"

Hope that helps!

 

p.s. In my rush, I neglected to go look at your table before I wrote that. ;-)  I see that you're using the "wikitable sortable" class already. I will add, though, that we don't have control over how the wiki markup works in this type of situation.

If you'd like to look at the details of how I have my cousin table set up, let me know, and I'll add you to the trusted list for a bit.

Comments

You can see in my post that I have found a workaround for not being able to use the data-sort-value to change how a column sorts. But it is a workaround that wiki developers say is deprecated and shouldn't be used.

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So how does their thing work then?  If the sorting is done in Javascript, then two different strings have to be passed to the browser, one to display and one to sort.

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Yes, that is where the data-sort-value comes in.

|data-sort-value="Ryker, Richard"|[[Ryker-100|Richard Ryker]]

This is supposed to sort using last name then first name because that is my data-sort-value for that cell.