Author Merging Question - Empty Profiles

[Catie]

I've been working on merging authors when it's clear that one profile is obviously a mistakenly spelled version of another - something like "Jean Craighead (Author) George" or "SCOTT. O'Dell" or the like.

The thing is - many authors have half a dozen or more of these bad versions of the their names, all of which have zero books listed. People seem to have taken all the books listed under the bad profiles out -- so is there any reason the goof profiles should remain, or can I go on merging them?

[Paula]

It's fine to merge, if a GR author you will need to post in the GR Author thread. It is also fine to leave them.

[Lobstergirl]

I thought a script was going to be run to get rid of these?

[Paula]

Sometime in the far future, if I remember correctly its not high on the list per rivka

[Catie]

Thanks all... is it fine to leave them because it doesn't hurt the site much? The reason I'm checking in the first place is that every once in a while I do find a few books in the bad profiles.

Thanks for the help.

[Lobstergirl]

"Hurt" is in the eye of the beholder, but they're clutter - they provide false search results, such as when you're using the "add book/author" link in a post, or in a trivia question. If in a trivia question you link to an empty profile, or to an incorrect profile that later gets merged, your link then goes dead.

[Kim]

It's always best to clean them up when you come across them.

[Catie]

That's what I thought - thanks so much for the input!