This has been requested by a few people, and I think it makes sense... but others have objected, saying that people would be disorientated by the change.

So I thought I might as well make a poll and see the public opinion on this (for once ).

The chronological sorting (actually, reverse chronological) would be based on the activity years of the artist for the band, so most recent bands would appear first, and oldest bands last. For example, on Steve DiGiorgio's page, the bands on the "active bands" tab would be listed in this order (with the album list remaining in normal chronological order under each band);

Ephel Duath (2011-present)
Synesis Absorption (2010-present)
Charred Walls of the Damned (2009-present)
Sadus (1984-present)

His other bands, having no years set, would show up beneath these bands in alphabetical order. This would encourage people to enter the dates even more.

Another example would be Dio:

Heaven and Hell (2006-present)
Black Sabbath (1979-1982, 1991-1992)
Dio (1982-2010)
Rainbow (1975-1978)
etc.

So.. What do you think? I'll be reading comments too but please vote in the poll. Thanks.

Allow me to quote Blind Guardian for this- "The jester's tears, they are inside me, apathy's, the script for my requiem."

While I didn't initially care, after seeing for myself how oddly arranged the bands were on artist pages, I've changed my mind... It now feels like bands are missing for the first time when opening a familiar artist's profile, fully expecting "Blind Guardian" or "Black Sabbath" to appear where the B-entries are...

Seriously? Seeing Demons & Wizards and its multitude of 2 albums before seeing Blind Guardian bothers you?

Just feels kinda haphazard, especially in the case of longer artist pages.

Also, the bands that artists have been in the longest are often the ones they're most famous for playing with, which would be logically listed at the bottom... Just feels... odd, somehow.

(... or to answer your question as succinctly as possible: yes. )

Yeah, I have to agree with Alhadis here, actually...with an alphabetic list I can know exactly where I need to find any one of, for example, Bob Macabre's silly projects, as long as I know the name. If I wanted to quickly find a band there if the list was in chronological order, I'd have to either scroll through the whole list, or search the project itself to find out when it was formed.

The current formatting seems more convenient for finding information on artists whose projects one isn't already familiar with, which is probably the majority of situations when one takes into account the sheer number of MA's artists with >1 project.

Similar to the subnavigation used in band discography lists, except the user's last picked option could "stick" between pages, saving the need to revert to the user's preferred setting (since people seem fairly divided between two camps, here).

Fairly divided? I see a minority of alphabetical-preferring people myself so far.

As to have both... it would require more complexity, since this information is cached server-side.

Doesn't matter. Can still have the elements output to the page in chronological order and use JavaScript to arrange the items alphabetically from the document's onLoad handler.

...Fine, you code it.

Fuck yeah, showtime. *kicks open Notepad++*

... actually, give me 10 minutes. Remembered I still haven't finished Photoshopping these two shirt designs I'm fixing up for Viral Load. ;p

Oh, when you said "most recent bands" in the chat I assumed it would be sorted by the latest release of each band. Going by join date seems weird to me. I cite myself as an example. I started Black Tribe in 1994, and The Continuum in 2000, so Black Tribe would appear after The Continuum in the last. However, Black Tribe was active far longer than The Continuum and thereby has more recent releases, so it would seem odd to me that a band that has releases just a short while ago come after a band that didn't have a release in ages. I think sorting by most recently active band (as in releasing stuff) would be far better than sorting by most recently joined band, just using the example above. Probably a lot harder to code, though, I dunno. Just my two cents.

I prefer chronological sorting anyway, but from early times to most recent activities.

Wait... we can do polls on this forum? THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING.

But in all seriousness, I approve of either A) reverse chronological or B) a choice of both.

I second that motion.

Wouldn't it be possible to have both? Then you'd have a sorting button that switches between "alphabetical" and "chronological".

Alphabetical (current) layout would be the same as the one now.
Chronological switches to this type of layout. Replace the columns "Band - Country - Genre" with "Year - Band - Release - Role" and as a bonus all can be sorted individually.

EDIT:

I think I'd actually slightly prefer alphabetical by a very slim margin, but with sorting by chronology hopefully influencing people to enter active dates more my vote would go to that. Your second example seems a bit awkward to me though. I'd think it'd be more like this:

Heaven and Hell (2006-present)
Dio (1982-2010)
Black Sabbath (1979-1982, 1991-1992)
Rainbow (1975-1978)

The difference being that they're sorted by the last date with the beginning date of that time period being what gives the precedence. Right now it looks like you were planning to rank them by the most recent beginning date. This way you'll get which bands they most recently played in instead of which bands they most recently joined. I think...

It's pretty much impossible to sort in the way you describe for Dio, I'm afraid...

i voted alphabetical but it would be nice to have more options...

nothing wrong with metal-archives as-is, more options are nice until they clutter the page

please keep the default listing alphabetical for non-members and new users§

I voted "I don't care either way", but I would like to change to "Alphabetical". It doesn't look like you can change your vote.

I'd rather keep it the way it is, and allow the user to change it to chronological or reverse chronological if he wants to.

Huh? I can change my vote. You don't see the radio button at the top?

Nope.

That's weird, the "allow re-voting" option is checked... might be a phpBB bug.

I've already bitched (:P) on the other thread, but if you are gonna do the chronological thing, please take into consideration having both in the future (also for band members, sorting them by instrument and then name). Pleeeeeeaaaasseeeeee

Here's my whining from the other thread:

I can't be positive as I hate chronological sorting for things that don't start with a date, it's messy for the user to see. Same thing happens with bands lineup: past members are a mess when the band has had a lot of them. They should be sorted by instrument, then by name. As for bands, by name. It's also a big mess when the years info is present for some bands and not for some others and then we have some artists sorted by date and some other sorted by instrument. Why not have them all sorted by instrument? (same thing applies for the new proposed sort order for bands). Seriously, who looks for the dates before the instrument or the band? If you want to see if your favorite guitar player played in band X (because you once heard he did), you would search by instrument and then by his name, you don't say "hmm, I think he may have played during 1999 before Ron Nobody but of course after Derek Somebody".

Sorry if it sounds rude, but I hate the way artists are sorted, it's just different in every band and it irritates me

If both cannot be had, I'd prefer reverse chronological.

Guys your are torturing me with every new reply I read in this thread

Alphabetical order would be easier.

How did you put a poll in your topic?

Well, she's the admin of the site...

Secret ninja magic.

hey! the thread is also a sticky!

Just kidding

BTW, I've just realized that this is a public thread

FYI, I can't seem to be able to change my vote either. I guess the feature might indeed have an issue.

I voted "I don't care either way" initially, but I'm more leaning towards "Chronological" now. Ideally, I'd prefer a proportional classification, with the bands the guy contributed to the most or for the longest at the top, and then organized in chronological order from there. But I don't think it's possible, or at least practical, to set up an automatic sorting system and expect it to give fine-tuned results that make perfect sense in every particular case.

Same goes for the sorting-by-instrument suggestion mentioned: yes, it's pretty awkward to have some line-ups that start with the drummer, or have the lead vocalist in the middle etc. But I realize expecting you guys to come up with a magical script that would know exactly how to prioritize between band members in most situations might be wishful thinking (I'm no script expert, though). Even with a script, I'm sure we'd still have awkward line-ups like, say, A) John Doe - Triangle, Vocals (lead) on track 42; B) Lloyd Singer - Vocals (lead) except on track 42; C) Soul Von Theband - Guitar, Bass, Drums, Keyboards. What would be nice would be the option to manually fix the order for line-ups (a slow and tedious process, sure, but worth a shot).

I voted for chronologically but I'd prefer the oldest band first. in any case that's a very useful feature

Voted for alphabetical, but both would be better - with an additional setting in the profile to choose which you prefer.

That would sound like a nice compromise; being able to choose alphabetical or chronological via profile. The one that wins this poll could be set default.

A profile setting would kick ass

Oh, damn

i take it the info is stored in a single text field rather than as separate years for joining/leaving?

in that case, could you not regex for what comes after the last dash (-) and sort by that?

Because I have a countable number of brain cells, I voted for Alphabetical, assuming that 'artist pages' meant band search pages.


But after removing the dunce cap, reverse chronologically is really the most logical way of looking at a musicians band resume. Starting with the most relevant information (ie current projects) seems extremely intuitive to me.

I don't understand why Dexter is talking about instrument sorting, when Morrigan's examples show that the lists will be comprised of bands?

The only problem is, as Dexter correctly stated, is that if the joining and leaving dates of bands aren't present, then this sorting method becomes non-existant. One solution to this is giving priority to a band in an artists career that have concrete dates of join/leave. My example will use Dio albums and I will pretend that his Black Sabbath join and leave dates are missing:

Heaven and Hell (2006-present)
Dio (1982-2010)
Rainbow (1975-1978)
Black Sabbath(N/A)