If your sort orders are not perfect then there is a problem with *cough* user error.

A sort order does not change its mind.

Either it works or it doesn't.

If you find your defaults do not work, perhaps checking the defaults setup on the Option Values would be a good idea.

On copying to a few products in "what ever" categories ... the current methods of pick 200 out of 10000 products would choke most servers.

I am working on a solution to this for a future release.

Default settings that do not work for you could be changed in the code ... you would have to maintain this for now as the Admin has not been re-written yet and it will be sometime before it is and has any kind of override system.

And then we could all dream about the day of getting all the folks needing all these neat new toys for Attributes to pool together and make really healthy donation on a monthly basis, each, to Zen Cart so that all we had to do was focus on Zen Cart and not do other silly things in order to feed my Kitty ... B)