[itsme]

"Ascending" / "Descending" should be the other way round for the sort methods "Date Modified" and "Date Created"
Ascending date usually means oldest on top.

[Zubersoft]

That is true... but I want the newest dates on top by default. The problem is that I don't want to store the ascending/descending flag separately for each different sorting type, so this doesn't make it easy to specify descending by default for date created/modified, but ascending for everything else. I'm not sure what the right answer is.

[BRX]

It's Not the most elegant solution, but you could just change the labels like

Date created (recent first)
Date modified (recent first)

and change the ascending box to reverse order or something. If the labels could change if the box is ticked and unticked all the better.

[itsme]

If it's complicated, just leave it as it is. It's just a matter of confusing wrong wording, the functionality is OK and works fine.