[5.2.x] Fixed #36686 -- Clarified Meta.ordering is ignored in GROUP BY queries.

Backport of 7e765a68598b2b798e49bf1f4b431a7bcac085a4 from main.

2 files changed, 15 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/docs/ref/models/options.txt b/docs/ref/models/options.txt
index 3433d0730f..62064d4f24 100644
--- a/docs/ref/models/options.txt
+++ b/docs/ref/models/options.txt
@@ -309,6 +309,12 @@ not be looking at your Django code. For example::
 
         ordering = [F("author").asc(nulls_last=True)]
 
+.. admonition:: Default ordering and GROUP BY
+
+    In :ref:`GROUP BY queries <aggregation-ordering-interaction>` (for example,
+    those using :meth:`~.QuerySet.values` and :meth:`~.QuerySet.annotate`), the
+    default ordering is not applied.
+
 .. warning::
 
     Ordering is not a free operation. Each field you add to the ordering
diff --git a/docs/topics/db/aggregation.txt b/docs/topics/db/aggregation.txt
index cd53f73c74..9598e54ca2 100644
--- a/docs/topics/db/aggregation.txt
+++ b/docs/topics/db/aggregation.txt
@@ -623,8 +623,15 @@ fields you also select in a ``values()`` call.
     You might reasonably ask why Django doesn't remove the extraneous columns
     for you. The main reason is consistency with ``distinct()`` and other
     places: Django **never** removes ordering constraints that you have
-    specified (and we can't change those other methods' behavior, as that
-    would violate our :doc:`/misc/api-stability` policy).
+    specified *explicitly with* ``order_by()`` (and we can't change those
+    other methods' behavior, as that would violate our
+    :doc:`/misc/api-stability` policy).
+
+.. admonition:: Default ordering not applied to GROUP BY
+
+    ``GROUP BY`` queries (for example, those using ``.values()`` and
+    ``.annotate()``) don't use the model's default ordering.
+    Use ``order_by()`` explicitly when a given order is needed.
 
 Aggregating annotations
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