Consolidate CK when combining authors (repost)

When author pages are combined, one page wins out and only its Common Knowledge is shown. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, people have entered detailed Common Knowledge on what ends up as a hidden page. It might sound straightforward to transfer the CK before combining, but often there are a very large number of pages, and even extensive checking beforehand may not pinpoint which page will win out.

This is a particular problem when the authors have degrees, religious titles, or titles of nobility. A couple of examples:
http://www.librarything.com/author/lovasiklawrenceg Lawrence G. Lovasik, a fairly obscure Catholic priest, has (by my count) 49 author pages. The 48 pages whose CK is hidden may well have extra CK, but the only way to find out is to pick them all apart and recombine.
http://www.librarything.com/author/windsordukeof The Duke of Windsor has 20 author pages for barely 80 copies in total.

When works are combined, the CK is amalgamated, so there may, for example, be two boxes for the last words instead of one, or two or more Canonical titles instead of one. I suggest that you change the way author CK is handled so that all the CK can be accessed when authors are combined (perhaps with an expandable box to show the hidden info).

(This is a repost of a suggestion from a month ago, since that one got sidetracked by a poor choice of example).

I suggest the opposite - that combining should be blocked when CK exists on both of the items to be combined (author or work).

1> +1 (million). I don't do a lot of author combining, but I ran into it just the other day.

2> I see why you suggest this, but I think it'd do more harm than good. You'd just add another manual step to fix the CK on the "lesser" entry. I'd prefer a system that says tells you there are CK conflicts, shows them, and lets you choose which CK should win. I'm fine with it doing this on a global basis (accept all CK from entry A or entry B) or a per-field basis (more work to code).

#2
I suggest the opposite - that combining should be blocked when CK exists on both of the items to be combined (author or work).

Work???
It's a solved problem for works: if there's varying CK, it shows up as multiple lines. This can easily be consolidated after combination. Series CK is by far the easiest way to line up complicated series for sorting and combination: if there are (as with the travel guides I worked on) multiple versions with different authors, and many with no author at all, then the series CK becomes really important. Wiping it before combination sounds crazy: if there's any glitch in the combination then the whole job of tracking down strays has to be done all over again.

And with regard to authors, if there was a consistent easy way of predicting which page would come out on top, then blanking the others beforehand might be okay. But there isn't.

I suggest the opposite - that combining should be blocked when CK exists on both of the items to be combined (author or work).

Perhaps not blocked, but at least there should be another step or confirmation--telling the combiner that there is conflicting CK and that there is therefore some indication that maybe the items shouldn't be combined.

I don't mind a notice / confirmation step. But definitely not blocking.

Regardless of that, however, it would be really good to have *all* the CK displayed on authors as well as on books.

found how to put this where it belongs. Now if the system had just done it correctly...ah well.

definitely need to verify info before combining though - and some way to mark the serious conflicts for an arbitrator to solve.

you also need to take multiple authors into account - most of the time when they are collaborating, they also write under their own names - and the results are NOT the same style at all - should really be seen as three authors rather than two

"A and B" should never be combined with A or B, so this shouldn't be an issue. Except that people do combine them sometimes, and there really should be a way to get the CK back where it belongs when they're separated.

(Of course, people shouldn't even enter "A and B" as an author, that's what Other Authors is for, but they do.)