The mass merge script selects recordings with lowest row ID as target by default.
There are multiple reasons for that behavior:
- It’s assumed older entries have better data quality
- Some scripts depend on it and would need to manually refresh their database to detect changed MBIDs. (Most notably the collection highlighter)
Obviously the latter reason assumes that everyone who uses that script stores stuff with the oldest ID and merges of affected entities don’t go into the opposite direction…
I’m not happy with the practice of merging into older entries, especially if the newer one has better quality or proper name.
It has confused other editors often enough and those who are not auto-editors wouldn’t be able to quickly “fix” the name after merge.