Follow-up: make “Descending Retrievability” a pure R sort

This is a follow-up to the recent thread on mixed-DR subdecks and sort order. I participated there; this post is a focused feature request rather than a how-it-works question.

Issue

When studying a parent deck that contains subdecks with different Desired Retentions (DR), the current “Descending Retrievability” order surfaces lower-R cards ahead of higher-R cards. Example: cards around R≈0.78 (from a DR=0.80 subdeck) appearing before cards around R≈0.89 (from a DR=0.95 subdeck). That behavior matches a DR-relative “freshness” sort, not a raw descending-R sort.

Why it matters

  • It’s surprising: the label suggests a simple “highest R first,” but the behavior is DR-relative.

  • It unintentionally penalizes high-DR subdecks during backlogs: high-DR cards sit on the steep part of the curve, decay faster, and get buried when ordering is relative to DR rather than absolute R.

  • Assigning a higher DR usually means “I want to prioritize these.” A DR-relative sort undermines that intent.

Concrete request

Please change “Descending Retrievability” to sort by raw R descending across cards, independent of DR.

Minimal repro

  1. Subdeck A: DR=0.95; Subdeck B: DR=0.80.

  2. Study at the parent level with “Descending Retrievability.”

  3. After a small backlog, observe R≈0.78 from B scheduled before R≈0.89 from A.

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