Ordering by negative numbers in sphinx

Question

Im implementing sphinx search engine into my site, thru SpinxSE, its all seems to be working okay, except for one of the sort methods I have on my site, which is "ranking", which can be a negative number. For some reason when I sort it in descending order from highest to lowest, negative numbers appear on top of the list as highest rated, and once it reaches positive numbers, it appears normally.

WHERE query='keyword;sort=attr_desc:v_rating;'

How can I put these negative rankings at the end of the list, after items ranked 0?

Answer 1

Switching the column to sql_attr_bigint solved the issue.