I hadn't realised moderators could change the sequence. That sounds like a good start already.

Even if we leave gaps in the initial numbering, the addition of new links with arbitrary numbers means there may need to be renumbering at some point. The problem of renumbering to make room for a new link sounds labour intensive. I'd like to see the ability for a moderator to resequence the main page directly (perhaps dragging links or pressing up and down buttons in an edit mode). Each affected link can then have its sequence number adjusted automatically in the background, without the moderator needing to go in and edit each one.

I worked on a large documentation project that didn't have an external table of contents but instead used this kind of numbering. We started things out with intervals of 10 (10, 20, 30...) instead of just 1, 2,3..., and that left us room to insert things (and then insert things between the inserted things). I agree it's a hack and external control would be better; I hated that aspect of that tool as opposed to a real TOC file.

I relate. I learned to program in BASIC, back when the line numbers were part of the code. They would default to 10, 20, 30 so at first adding lines in between was fine, but eventually I'd be trying to guess where to leave space (should I make this new line 25, or 23 because I'm more likely to add further lines after it than before it?).

I'd like to find a way of avoiding that pain for Codidact moderators, but in a way that's still backward compatible for instances which have already started using the manual numbering.

One way would be the dragging or up and down buttons I suggested, but a simpler approach might be a button to renumber all the articles with plenty of space in between. This would still require the moderator knowing the sequence numbers of the articles in order to know how to place a new or moved article where they want it though.

My first language was BASIC, too. That pain never completely goes away. :-)

Some sort of visual interface would be great, drag&drop or even +/- controls. I don't know how hard that is, but this isn't the only place where we want that sort of interface. (Being able to reorder the communities you see in the drop-down and on the dashboard, and maybe that tab on your profile, would be pretty sweet.)