On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 8:12 AM, Tom Morris <[email protected]> wrote:
> I think it would be a lot better to merge the two works rather than
> deleting one.  That way if someone has the old identifier/URL stored
> somewhere and uses it, they'll still get useful results.  That's what
> Freebase does when it merges Open Library works/editions/authors.

I agree, and I think the actual process is like that, rather than a
true delete.  I just don't think the merge is completing in a few
cases.

I can see that when you merge two authors, the secondary author
changes to become a redirect to the primary author.  So the OL author
ID number still exists in the database, and links to it will take you
to the primary entry.  But the secondary one no longer shows up in
lists or searches.

Since the extra work entries under an author disappear (99% of the
time :-) after WorkBot merges them, I assume it is (normally) doing
the same approach of "redirect in order to delete".  It just doesn't
seem to clean up the secondary work entries, once in a while.

- Alan
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