Can librarians delete authors?

[Eric]

Or rather, how do we deal with empty author pages? Someone had entered a few books with an incorrect spelling of the author, I've corrected the spelling on the books and the incorrect authors page it just sitting there very empty. (How) Can I fix this?

Also if the topic has the spelling of "Brian Q. Miller" that is the page I am looking to get removed, if it did in fact link the Bryan Q. Miller, GR has failed me and assumed I was referring to the correctly spelled one. Preview was no help and please don't delete the Bryan page...just saying.

[Empress]

Just change the name to Unknown and merge with the profile. Or any other profile. It will get rid of it.

[Eric]

How do you merge profiles? Sorry never done that before.

Also it looks like GR didn't link anything, I'm talking about http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

Wait, you mean this page is going to sit here forever?

[Catalina]

You should merge it with the correct spelled profile of the author - to be sure you don't miss any quotes, discussions or fans.
Unknown should be used only in case of 'authors' that cannot be identified.

[Eric]

I also figured out the merge when I went to list it as Unknown. Its been properly merged with the correct spelling.

PS- "Books can be attributed to "Unknown" when the author or editor (as applicable) is not known and cannot be discovered. If at all possible, list at least one actual author or editor for a book instead of using "Unknown".

Books whose authorship is purposefully withheld should be attributed instead to Anonymous."

Why you being naughty and telling me to break the rules Ellie...

[Empress]

Eric wrote: ", how do we deal with empty author pages?..."

You are quoting me rules for books, not for empty author profiles.

[Eric]

Alright, fair enough. Well, it's been dealt with and resolved. Thank you for your reply.

[Empress]

Eric wrote: "Alright, fair enough. Well, it's been dealt with and resolved. Thank you for your reply."

And new things have been learned today, so it is a good day. But a good night from me

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

For Unclaimed author profiles, librarians can merge with corrected author name (just by editing the incorrect author name, when you save it will ask if that's what you want to do). Not necessary to edit author name on individual books, the merge will handle for you. Occasionally the incorrect author profile may have some info you will want to add to the correct profile before merging.

Claimed Goodreads author profiles need staff to merge (just add the author profile to the thread listing authors for staff to merge; current thread is http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1... ).

Sporadically, there is a script that runs cleaning up empty author profiles (no books, no quotes, no fans, etc.) but as someone already said merging makes sure any quotes and such go to correct profile.

When merging common names like "Brian" and "Miller" not a bad idea when editing to click similar names in case of other misspellings or nonstandard goodreads format (like initials without periods, added spaces, professional titles, etc.). In this case, there was a "Brian Q Miller" (no period after Q) as well as "Bryan Q. Miller" (period correctly in place).