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Many-many templates contain the "ugly" {{PAGENAME}} variable to avoid sorting by
the namespace name.  This is error prone (can be acidentally omitted very
easily) and ugly.

I also request this feature but need another sort-criteria "__SORTPAGEAGE__" to
sort pages by their age, when they where created. The german wikibooks uses a
special sortkey, to keep track of new wikibook-candidates. They will be listed
in a special category until a few month passed. They are sorted by date of
creation, Books listed first are oldest. After beeing a candidate, they will be
deleted or they aquire book state.

http://de.wikibooks.org/wiki/Kategorie:Wikibooks:QM:Buchkandidat

if not possible, i request a variable {{CREATIONTIMESTAMP}} which returns a
timestamp formatted like {{CURRENTTIMESTAMP}} containing the timestamp of the
creation of a page.

I agree that this would be useful, time-saving, and it would make categories more useful. 
It would save every single page from having to resolve the {{PAGENAME}} variable, for 
every single category for which it is a member.

Note that English wikibooks now uses the Book/SubPage convention for indidivual
books, not Namespace-like things like Book:.

My proposal would be to have a syntax like
[[Category:Foo/]]
where the slash indicates that we should use the pagename as the sorting key,
(so S for SubPage, not B for Book)

Maybe the Sortcriteria should be optional too, a defaultvalue and a force value.

[[Category:Foo]] May indicate to use default sort, which is specified on
Category Page.
[[Category:Foo|A Sortvalue]] Forced to sort this Page equal to "A Sortvalue",
which will be found under "A".

This, would be easier for the migration process into an improved
Category-System. So the 
Namingconvention might not be a big problem. Is there a Syntax Proposal for this 
improved Category system ?

Both of the last comments have missed the point.

The point is to change the sort method ON THE CATEGORY PAGE ITSELF, so we don't
have to resort to silly tricks on every member of the category.

Also, the wikibooks Cookbook does have a namespace, so this is still an issue.
And Maxim's last idea is what is already implemented.

I mean, the system should support both styles. When the default mode 
is used, ([[Category:Foo]]) the Sortkey should be used from the 
Category page, but when a Sortvalue is given, this should be used 
instead. The Defaultkey - whether Subpage, Pagename, fullpagename, Pageage or
anythin else should only be applied, if no special Sortvalue is given.

I hope this comment is more precise.

Fixed in SVN trunk, r38992.
Set the switch $wgCategoryPrefixedDefaultSortkey to false to get a sane default sortkey. However, that switch is currently set to true on wikimedia wikis.

*** Bug 12351 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

This was reverted in r70416.