Don't alter the order of roles in the Role dropdown when editing a user

[johnbillion]

When editing a user, the user's current role gets moved to the top of the list of roles shown in the Role dropdown. Reordering items in a list can be confusing, and although the roles in WordPress aren't strictly hierarchical there is an implied hierarchy that should be maintained in this list.

[ketuchetan]

Hi @johnbillion

So, you mean we need to display the all the roles list default way, not the user's current role gets moved to the top of the list?

If I understand properly then please let me know so I can add my patch here.

[swissspidy]

@ketuchetan That's how I understand it, yes.

[lukecavanagh]

Seems like that is defined here.
​https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/master/wp-admin/user-edit.php#L363

Using this function.
​https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/wp_dropdown_roles/

So default user roles in core hierarchy would be the following then?

​https://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities#Summary_of_Roles

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How would additional user roles either custom added or by a plugin relate to the hierarchy of the user roles in core, would those be based on user capabilities, for example WooCommerce adds in two new user roles, Customer and Shop Manager.

​https://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities#Capabilities

[bor0]

How would additional user roles either custom added or by a plugin relate to the hierarchy of the user roles in core, would those be based on user capabilities, for example WooCommerce adds in two new user roles, Customer and Shop Manager.

While related, I think this is out of scope for this ticket as this is only about not resetting the index of the currently selected role.

After proposed patch (40162.diff) here's how it appears like:

[lukecavanagh]

User Role Dropdown after patch

[lukecavanagh]

@bor0

The patch applies cleanly and works well.

[bor0]

Thank you @lukecavanagh. Please take a look at #40168 also.

[johnbillion]

In 40323:

Users: Don't push the current user's role to the top of the list in wp_dropdown_roles().

This brings consistency to the order in which roles are displayed in the Roles dropdown when editing users.

Props bor0

Fixes #40162