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I think it would be nice to display tags in alphabetical order. Currently, tags are displayed in order of creation.

As a workaround, I remove, and then add the tags, which is a bit dumb, but I like 'em in alphabetical order.

It's probably pretty trivial to implement, and nice to have!

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  • tags are displayed in order of creation. -> which page are you referring to?
    – Sathyajith Bhat
    Commented Oct 25, 2011 at 7:26
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    Any Stack Exchange site; e.g. I have tags "cakephp", "javascript" in my list of favourite tags. If I were to add "codeigniter", the tag is appended to the list; i.e. "cakephp", "javascript", "codeigniter" instead of (my preference) "cakephp", "codeigniter", "javascript".
    – Wayne
    Commented Oct 25, 2011 at 7:33
  • Ok, could you mention why it's nice to have? I'm not entirely sure I understand what's the net gain in having it arranged in asc. order
    – Sathyajith Bhat
    Commented Oct 25, 2011 at 7:35
  • Well, I would like it in alphabetical order, and in order for me to see that, I often remove all my tags, and then re-add 'em in alphabetical order.
    – Wayne
    Commented Oct 25, 2011 at 7:41
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    Saying that it would be nice to have since you want it is a bit too little. What is the real benefit from changing it?
    – slhck
    Commented Oct 25, 2011 at 7:45
  • Well, maybe the only beneficiary might be me, AFAIK. So I wanted to know if there were any other users along this line. Maybe not.
    – Wayne
    Commented Oct 25, 2011 at 8:03
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    @slhck - What's the real benefit for having them in order of creation?
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Commented Oct 25, 2011 at 17:04
  • @Sathya - I've posted an explanation as an answer below. How many tags do you have in your lists?
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Commented Oct 25, 2011 at 17:05
  • @WayneKhan - Nope, also want this! Though I don't take the time to remove and re-add the tags.
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Commented Oct 25, 2011 at 17:06
  • @KevinVermeer It's not about not wanting it too, but in order to get a feature request through you should tell people why it's better.
    – slhck
    Commented Oct 25, 2011 at 17:08
  • @KevinVermeer I can understand - mine's manageable i.imgur.com/5Nfzh.png
    – Sathyajith Bhat
    Commented Oct 25, 2011 at 17:24
  • I'm so so glad I'm not the only one to feel this way. Kevin's might be the best idea, having an switch case for creation time or alphabetical order.
    – Wayne
    Commented Oct 26, 2011 at 1:23

3 Answers 3

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I wholeheartedly support this suggestion! It's easy enough to re-order your ignored and favorite tags if you've only got a few, but I'm neither a web developer, nor an applications developer. There's so much stuff on SO that it's hard to find the stuff I'm interested in if I don't filter it out. My preferences look like this:

enter image description here

Quick - Am I ignoring the tag or not? You'll see and on the left below the and tags, but isn't there. If I suddenly see a question (does that exist yet?) I'm going to also want to ignore and all its associated versions. The current setup makes it difficult to scan, CTRL-F works but my eyes could do it quickly if the list was alphabetized. (Quicker on the prefs page at least; this list is about 2 1/2 times the height of my browser when it's next to the questions feed, so CTRL-F is quicker than scrolling).

Let's ask "Why shouldn't it be sorted alphabetically?" instead of asking why it should be. For my use case, I have no need to sort by time. I can't conceive of a use case that would be.

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  • Related: Can I get 50 questions on my front page, please? and its associated troubles are magnified with lots of ignored tags.
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Commented Oct 25, 2011 at 16:33
  • Note: This post reminded me to go work on this again. I went to the front page, scrolled down until I could see the "Add" box, and added ignored tags until I didn't see anything I didn't want to see anymore. It's another 2 or 3 lines longer now.
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Commented Oct 25, 2011 at 16:48
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    btw - you can use wildcards i.imgur.com/5Nfzh.png
    – Sathyajith Bhat
    Commented Oct 25, 2011 at 17:24
  • @Sathya - Great comment, thanks for that. I tried it once, but I must have misspelled the tag or something because it didn't work, and I used a big list instead. However, I'll still have a big list even with wildcards.
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Commented Oct 25, 2011 at 17:26
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    Agreed. I have 49 favorite tags on SO (and no ignored tags). I'd at least like the option of displaying them alphabetically, in case some users prefer creation order.
    – Keith Thompson
    Commented Oct 25, 2011 at 19:42
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You can easily do this by writing a UserScript. Actually, I decided to just go ahead and write one.

Here it is: http://files.quickmediasolutions.com/userscripts/reorder_tags.user.js

If you are using Chrome, just click the link above. If you are using Firefox, make sure you have the GreaseMonkey extension installed. If you are using anything else, please look at this page for directions.

Once the script is installed, visit any Stack Exchange site and your list of favorite and ignored tags will be listed in alphabetical order.

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0

Alphabetized tags have now been implemented.

According to Shog9 on Stack Overflow, this was implemented as part an upcoming redesign for tag watching as part of Teams.

We're currently working on porting the redesigned tag-watching features that we've built for Teams back into the public Q&A sites. This redesign features a number of new features and a streamlined UI (no more hidden "ignore" function, no more having to visit your profile page to change how ignored tags work!). The public version of this UI hasn't changed yet (beyond the sorting), but the plumbing is in place now.

So, I suppose this is , even if it wasn't intentional.

(Related: My favorite tags are alphabetized now)

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  • To be clear, the alphabetization was intentional; the previous behavior was also intentional, but... mostly just convenient.
    – Shog9
    Commented May 17, 2018 at 19:50

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