KotDB: well, that's backwards according to every other instance in which i've seen an arrow used to indicate the order of a list in a computer UI, and it's also counterintuitive. an arrow indicates that whatever it refers to goes in the direction in which the arrow points; where this is not the case, the arrow is meaningless. an upward-pointing arrow indicates that a thing - in this case, the list - begins at the bottom and progresses upward. if the arrow goes up while the list goes down, one of the two is backwards.

an alternative is to do what Apple does in iTunes and Mail and other apps that let you order lists by column: use a triangle. the point of the triangle, being narrowest, indicates the smallest value in the list and the base, being widest, the largest. so a right-side-up triangle indicates a list ordered from A to Z or from lowest value to highest, and an upside-down one indicates the reverse. thus if you interpreted the triangle as the head of an arrow it would be consistent with your ascending/descending theory - but it's not an arrow head: it's a triangle, whose gradual change in width represents relative values in a continuum.

so if Fencer just hacked the stems off the arrows and left the triangular heads, the problem would be solved. :)