Plugin Directory: Reorder 'Conributors'

[Ipstenu]

On the old directory, we listed the contributors on the sidebar in order they were added to the readme.txt file.

On the new one, we list them alphabetically based on the same value.

Some plugins purposefully order their authors so to put their main ones first. This aspect of the usability of the contributors section was lost with the change.

Option 1: Restore the old way

Pros: People have control over the order
Cons: Users don't actually know what that means and see an unordered list, not all devs do this

Option 2: Order based on commit access

Example: Grab the list of committers, list them. Then exclude them from a list of contributors in the readme and display that.

Pros: Committers are admins. They would be more easily indicated.
Cons: Some people are weird and don't list committers on the author list

Option 3: Do nothing

Pros: Nothing to do, socializes development by making everyone equal
Cons: Doesn't allow people to indicate that some people contribute more than others

Also since users can put important persons in their author section of the plugin, they could prioritize there...

[dd32]

I'd go for option 1 or 3 here myself.

There's nothing wrong with listing it in readme order IMHO, but at the same time, I don't see anything wrong with sorting alphabetically either.
I don't think we should introduce magic ordering based on commit access though - some plugin "owners" are not committers (and shouldn't be) but should still be able to appear at the start of the list (if we dropped alpha ordering)

[Ipstenu]

With that in mind, I'd support 1 then.

WordPress' own credit pages supports putting some people on the top section and then everyone else, who did props etc, gets the lower listing, which is why I thought of 2.

[dd32]

In 4620:

Plugin Directory: Sort the Contributors & Developers field in the order that it appears in the readme.

As we're storing contributors in a taxonomy, this requires switching the taxonomy to a sorted taxonomy, and using a lower-level terms function, although one which still has caching.

Fixes #2363

[dd32]

[4620] was a little larger than I was expecting..

It'll only take effect upon the next plugin import for the plugin, however, see ​https://wordpress.org/plugins-wp/wordpress-beta-tester/ as an example.

[sc0ttkclark]

@sergey said I should reopen this ticket, just in case something went wrong. I'm not seeing the sort reflected and my plugin was updated as of 2 months ago (with another update coming this month).

​https://wordpress.org/plugins/pods/

The order appears to be in order of username, not the order used in the readme.txt itself.

Here's the list from the readme.txt:

Contributors: sc0ttkclark, pglewis, jimtrue, Shelob9, jamesgol,
clubduece, dan.stefan, Desertsnowman, curtismchale, logikal16,
mikedamage, jchristopher, keraweb, ramoonus, pcfreak30

[dd32]

Traced this back to [5121] which highlights that [4620] didn't update all uses of the plugin_contributor taxonomy to sort by term_order.

[dd32]

In 5924:

Plugin Directory: Sort the Contributors & Developers field in the order that it appears in the readme.

This was previously fixed in [4620] for one location, which was later changed. This updates the other two locations which were originally missed.

Fixes #2363.