[(JD)]

I thought it used to display in alphabetical order (with your own SN first).... now I can't find anyone I'm looking for

Is this a site setting, or something I messed up?

[sabby]

It changed awhile ago (JD), it's not you. I guess it takes up less something or another to not list them in alphabetical order. I find it difficult myself when looking for someone specific.

Here's what DocJohn said back in October of last year about it:

We changed it from alphabetical to random because it helps reduce the load on the server, believe it or not.

[ECHOES]

Yeah, it isn't very useful the way it is now. Oh well.

[Phreak]

Basically sorting things takes time it's quicker to just list all the active users than it is to retrieve and sort them.

Also it's not something that's easily cacheable meaning on every page retrieve it needs redoing. If you're saving 0.2 seconds on a few thousand daily page requests it soon amounts to a significant saving.

[DocJohn]

I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

We'll turn back on the alphabetical listing for now and keep an eye on the server's resources. We made some optimizations a little while ago that should help, and allow us to alphabetize the list again. But be warned -- if we find it's still impacting the server's health, we'll have to turn it off again.

DocJohn

[FooZe]

If I were looking for a particular username (or other item) in a long list and the list wasn't alphabetized, I'd probably resort to Ctrl-F, the "Find" function of my browser.