Delisted Games Tracker

Symbols, then numbers, then letters

Titles are compared character by character, and characters run in that order: punctuation and symbols first, then digits, then letters. So #IDARB and 'Splosion Man sit at the very front of the catalogue, ahead of 2 Fast 2 Furious, which in turn sits ahead of Alpha Protocol.

Case and accents don't move a title

Sorting is blind to capitals and to accent marks: alpha, Alpha and ALPHA all file in the same place, and Pokémon files exactly where Pokemon would. A record is never stranded at the bottom of the list because its title happens to be lower-case or carries a diacritic.

Digits are read as numbers, not as text

A run of digits is compared by value, so Final Fantasy 2 comes before Final Fantasy 10. Plain text sorting would put them the other way round, because the character 1 is lower than 2. Numbered series therefore read in the order they were released rather than in dictionary order.

Titles file exactly as printed

A leading The, A or An is not set aside the way an old library catalogue would set it aside. The title is filed as it is written, so The Last of Us sits under T, not under L. The reason is searchability: what you type into the search bar is what is printed on the card.

Blanks always file last

Not every record is complete. When a record has no IGDB rating or no known release year, it does not sort as a zero — it drops to the end of the list, and it stays at the end whichever direction the sort runs. Sorting by oldest never opens on a wall of undated records.

Ties are broken, so pages never shuffle

Two records can share a rating or a release year — thousands do. When they tie, the title decides, and if the titles are identical too, the call number does. Nothing is left to chance, so page 7 of a result holds the same 24 cards every time you ask for it, and the JSON export of a query matches what you saw on screen.

What the sort control does

The sort menu in the catalogue toolbar offers four orders. Each applies to the whole filtered set, not just the page on screen: change the sort and the records reshuffle across every page rather than within the 24 in front of you. Below is the top of the catalogue under each order, as it stands right now.

Shelf order is not the call number

The two systems answer different questions. A call number — STE · 2014 · 8234 — is permanent: it says which storefront cabinet and which release-year drawer a record belongs to, and it never changes. Shelf order is temporary: it is however you asked the catalogue to lay the cards out this minute. Filtering changes which cards are on the shelf; sorting changes the order they lie in; neither one alters a call number.

One place they meet: the search bar reads call numbers too, so typing STE, 2014 or a partial 823 narrows the shelf to matching records — which are then laid out in whichever order the sort control is set to.