As a side debate (subject line altered appropriately), should it be
enabled by default?

Personally I would say no, since it changes current functionality. I have
no need for this feature since I only play playlists directly, so the
names of the actual music files have no interest or meaning for me.

However I do have some "custom" playlists (i.e. mixes, not original artist
albums), and I labelled them all beginning with 00 (zero zero) so that
they sorted first in my list of playlists. Once this new feature was
implemented, my playlists suddenly disappeared into the big list of
playlists, so that 00Rock.m3u sorted under R while 00ClassicRock.m3u
sorted under C.

Fortunately I follow the discussions on here so I was aware of the change
and what I needed to alter in my settings to disable it.

I would vote for new features which change existing functionality to be
disabled by default. Do we have a general policy on this?

-- 
Mike Holden
http://www.by-ang.com - the place to shop for all manner of hand crafted
items, including Jewellery, Greetings Cards and Gifts