TODO: Review the sorting rules from https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DWsEqT8KfheKZmMB3n_VhJpl9nIxiUjai_AIQPAjiyA/edit?usp=sharing and update this comment.

2025/01/29: Julian will review and decide if/when to move forward back into the Sprint queue.

If it makes the merging decision easier, we could also leave the sorting of minor versions untouched for now (possibly split a sorting change for minor versions into a second PR). But it would be nice if the sorting of the draft versions could be fixed. As I mentioned in the issue, it's been noted by one of our curators that the sorting of draft versions in review based on the publication date of the most recent major version is confusing.

This bug was discovered by one of our curators who used "My data" to get a list of datasets to be reviewed. A dataset which was just submitted for review today was not to be found on page 1, as expected, but on one of the latest pages.

It seems that the dataset was sorted based on the dateSort timestamp which was copied from the latest published version (which was published September 24). This means the draft was sorted as if it was created/submitted last September instead of today.

Thanks for your comment in the GitHub issue @vera.

I've always thought, and I might've heard this from someone years ago, that sorting works the way it has because folks thought that insignificant dataset updates shouldn't make the dataset more "new" than newly published datasets and datasets with significant updates.

This reasoning isn't in the Google Doc that @pdurbin shared. The effects of this decision are discussed a bit in #2607, but the why isn't discussed there either.

@vera what you shared from your curator makes perfect sense to me, too. It sounds like "new" is being thought of in different ways.

And of course it's possible that no one will mind that minor versions start causing datasets to appear at the top when sorting by Newest. I just wasn't sure if this reasoning had been considered here and wanted to make sure that it was before it's changed.

I've always thought, and I might've heard this from someone years ago, that sorting works the way it has because folks thought that insignificant dataset updates shouldn't make the dataset more "new" than newly published datasets and datasets with significant updates.

That does make sense. Perhaps that means minor versions should stay sorted as they currently are, but drafts should be sorted according to their own timestamp. I would say that if you are able to see a draft, you are usually either a curator or a contributor, and in both cases it makes sense for a new draft to show up on the top, because you are interested in seeing that a new draft exists, checking what's changed, making further edits, reviewing the draft for publication, etc.