(no subject)

[sholio]

Okay, here's something that's been low-key bugging me for some time:

What order does the AO3 "assignments" page list the various things you're signed up for? It frustrates me that it doesn't put your open/unfilled assignments together at the top or bottom, because that would be really handy to be able to see at a glance. But I've been trying to figure out for years what criteria it's actually using to decide what order to put them in. It's not chronological. It's not alphabetical, at least not by anything that I've tried to make fit (exchange name, recipient name, fic name). It doesn't seem to be based on deadline date or word count or anything else.

Yet it can't be completely random because it always puts the same ones at the top. So what criteria is it using? Does anyone know?

ETA: Got an answer, thanks!

Comments

[slightweasel]

It's your official assignments in chronological order of when you received them, followed by your pinch hits, also in chronological order from when you received them.

[sholio]

Oh, THAT'S why they seem so completely out of order! I pick up pinch hits all the time, so I have almost as many of those as I do regular assignments. I didn't realize they were listed separately, so it just looked like it would go chronologically for awhile and then suddenly, for no reason, jump back in time several years.

Thank you!

[melannen]

Huh, mine has always been reverse chronological with the newest at the bottom - but I've rarely had more than one open assignment, so it's mostly just looked like it's by posting date of the work. It might be based on something like when the collection was created? Does that make any sense?

[sholio]

See above: it's assignments and pinch hits listed separately! I tend to pick up pinch hits so often that I have about as many of those as I do assignments, and I didn't realize they were treated differently, so to me it just seemed like sometimes assignments show up at the bottom of the list and sometimes in the middle, with no particular reason to it.

[sheron]

XD

[senmut]

When I was doing exchanges more frequently, I just got in the habit of ctrl-f for 'fulfill' to find the one I needed. Because I noted the chronological order early on, with pinch hits separate. It is aggravating, but a very small one, to not have the open ones 'sticky' at the top of the list until completed. Too much dynamic change, I think, to task the servers that way.