When editing an article in the English Wikipedia using the source editor, the templates used are listed below the edit textarea under:
Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page
The templates are in alphabetical order, followed by the modules in alphabetical order.
Afterwards, when previewing the edit, the templates are listed in a different order (probably in order of evaluation).
Instead, when listing the templates, always sort them into alphabetical order.
| Status | Subtype | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open | None | T41272 Bugs in "Live preview" feature (tracking) | |||
| Resolved | BUG REPORT | None | T315746 In edit preview, always sort the template list in alphabetical order |
I can reproduce, but only when using live preview (Preferences → Editing → Show previews without reloading the page).
The live preview JS code needs to sort them, like the PHP code does here: https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki/blob/master/includes/TemplatesOnThisPageFormatter.php#L110
I actually like the non-alphabetic sorting. When dealing with deeply nested templates, the order of evaluation helps finding through which template a nested template is transcluded.
I think we probably all agree that they should be in the same order regardless of whether they're loaded server-side or client-side.
It looks like the PHP sorting has been in place since 2008, and (at least on Wikimedia sites) live preview is not nearly as widely used as non-live preview (rough numbers from two days ago: 150k nonlive, 7k live, 25k realtime), I'd suggest that most people are seeing the list sorted, and therefore we should fix the client-side display to be sorted.
If I just want to review which templates I am using, I want alphabetical order, but if I want to confirm I am using templates in a consistent order across pages (and am not using a template to enforce this), I want to see them listed in the order I use them in.