Series not sorting correctly

On the American Girls series page (https://www.librarything.com/series/American%20Girls), the sorting numbers go:

2.04 (Happy Birthday Felicity)
2.421 (Felicity's Paper Dolls)
2.422 (Felicity Play Scenes & Paper Dolls)
2.05 (Felicity Saves the Day)

That's not right, is it? Am I missing something? 2.41 and 2.43 are a few rows down from that and it seems to me that 2.421 and 2.422 should be in between them. Is 3 digits after the decimal too many?

reference the other names so you can see what does work.

I would expect them to land between:

2.41 (Welcome to Felicity's World)
and
2.43 (Felicity's Craft Book)

Further down the page I see:

4.41 (Welcome to Josefina's World)
4.42 (Josefina Play Scenes & Paper Dolls)
4.42 (Josefina's Paper Dolls)
4.43 (Josefina's Craft Book)

Sorted correctly. So it does seem to have something to do with the third digit after the decimal.

>1 norabelle414: I'd expect you're right, that 3rd digit does seem to be causing the problem. It's hard to see in action, though, given the way the decimals don't display on the series page (it just shows the "Felicity Paper Dolls 1" part). I'm going to have to test this by making it worse before I make it better, I think, so don't panic if you see some other books in this series moving around.

I don't think 3 digits are the problem as such - but if you want to use 3 digits for some you should use 3 digits for all.

>5 lorannen: Thanks for the heads up! I won't panic :-)

>6 andyl: There are plenty of series that successfully mix one and two digits after the decimal; I don't see why two and three digits should be any different.

>7 norabelle414:

I was just thinking off the top of my head. Personally 3 digits for everything would suit me better just because it is regular - and it is worth testing on the Felicity subseries that is showing the problem.

Changing "Felicity Saves the Day" to 2.005 does indeed move it above Paper Dolls but also above Meet Felicity (which is expected). So you would have to change all the Felicity entries.

I don't think I have seen any series (or awards) that mix one and two digits after the decimal.

>8 andyl: Adding an extra digit after the series numbering has already been established is very useful for series that are ongoing where new books (or short stories, or whatever) could be written anywhere in the series. Otherwise the whole series might have to be re-numbered when a new book is added in the middle.

If I were inclined to just band-aid this issue I would probably go with using 2.42 for both of them like the Josefina ones in >4 norabelle414:. But someone has clearly put a lot of care into the numbering system of this series and it would be a shame for that to go to waste!

I have worked on several series mixing one and two digits after the decimal, but of course since the numbers are not visible on the series page the only way to tell is by going to a bunch of different work pages. It's not apparent unless you're actively working on that series.