@pmclanahan note that the sort_num behavior isn't exactly the same as a database sort. As noted in the docstring, this sort treats None as equivalent to 0 here, but order_by('-sort_num') will put notes without a sort_num below those with a negative sort_num, which was contrary to my understanding of how @lsblakk wanted it to be sorted. I believe the performance impact is negligible for such a small set of items to be ordered, but if we were sorting a large of notes on a given release, as a micro-optimization we could change the behavior by 1) updating all of the notes with a null sort_num to have a 0 sort_num and 2) making sort_num required, with a default value of 0. Again, I don't believe that this would have a significant performance impact, and I'm open to making this change. What do you think, @lsblakk?