Joining Parcels - Which Is The New Master?

I remember somewhere back in time, Phil asking about joining parcels, and when doing so, which parcel becomes the "master" parcel - i.e. the one that keeps the parcel name, description, info, teleport landing spots, etc? Can anyone help me out?

[Edit: NVM, it's the second parcel selected. Just figured it out. ]

It's the larger parcel.

the last one selected, regardless of size.

Since when? They fixed this a while back, and it was in a blog post. Cite a source. AFAIK, it is the largest parcel, and I have it as such in the search optimization sticky. If they changed it, that needs updating.

ETA: I checked the Knowledge Base and it is the larger parcel. Granted, you can't always trust the Knowledge Base but it specifically discusses the problem of search rankings and was modified as recently as 12/29/2008.

easiest way to find out, is cut a couple parcels, one a bit bigger than the other, and join them, selecting the smaller one last... see what happens

(of course give them different names)

if it takes the name of the smaller one then it is the last selected rule
if it takes the name of the larger one, then it is the largest selected rule

It looks like there's no such thing as selection order, all we can do is specify a rectangle and the parcels it covers get joined

There's a knowledge base article on joining and splitting land with this note at the bottom:



An aside for us geeks, the ParcelJoin message with no parameters other than a rectangle http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/ParcelJoin

When joining parcels, ALWAYS disable autoreturn on BOTH parcels before joining... JUST IN CASE the wrong parcel becomes the master.. you won't get your shop autoreturned.

I think what people mean by selection order, is... you start the rectangle on one plot, then the last plot it touches would be the last "selected"

I've been doing quite a few parcel joins lately, and invariably the larger parcel has "won".

Also invariably, auto-return has been turned off on the resulting parcel, even though both constituent parcels had auto-return activated before joining. I can see this is a good thing to avoid unintended returns of stuff, which could be disastrous; in comparison it's a minor annoyance to turn it back on, but something I have to remind myself each time I join parcels.

It is definitely the largest parcel.

Since they sorted it out, I've added land, cut land and joined land to my store, without any more problems, and it is as they said - the largest parcel.

If the two parcels are the same size, cut one of them to make it smaller, and leave the important parcel as the largest one.

Incidentally, it didn't used to be the last parcel selected. It was the oldest created parcel that was used for the new parcel, and there was no way of knowing which the oldest one was.

Oryx

Come and meet your new Master.

/me grins... could not resist that one could I?

That used to drive me mad.
I worked to a rule that it was the last selected - and it seemed to work - until one day the opposite happened. At which stage I cursed myself for misremembering... so then I'm shouting to myself. "Remember ...it's the OPPOSITE of linking prims into an object!...until one day .........

Maybe about a year ago, Torley did a vid tut on Land. "Oh goodie!" I thought, when he came to the joining bit. SO then he says that he's not sure of the rule.... duh!

Anyhoo -

All my recent joinings have followed the 'larger parcel is master' rule, and as Phil says, if you have two equal-sized parcels, cut a bit out of one to make it smaller and rejoind the bit afterwards.

Torley wasn't the only one. When the problem was discovered, they had to examine the code to find out what was happening because nobody knew. To their credit, they dealt with it amazingly fast.

I for one welcome our larger Master parcels.