Merge Rather Than Delete

It's usually best to merge duplicate entities (releases, release groups, recordings, etc.) instead of deleting them. This applies even if the entity just got added!

Deleting entities has two kinds of bad effects on the database:

• Even if there's no useful data attached to the entity when you enter the edit, it's possible that someone may enter it before your removal is approved. If so, the recently added data will be lost.
• The MusicBrainz identifiers that have been referenced anywhere (tagged files, links to MusicBrainz from other sites, etc.) will become invalid when the entity is deleted. When merging it, however, the old identifiers will forward to the entity it is merged into, so anyone clicking an old link or looking at their old tags will still be able to find the right entity. Even if the entity was added very recently and you think nobody can possibly be using the identifiers yet, remember that many other sites and applications that use MusicBrainz data (anything from the BBC to Setlist.fm) get the data very soon after it is added and automatically add the identifiers to their system. Deleting has a chance of causing problems while merging it will always be safer.

For similar reasons, it is better to merge misspelled artists into their correct names, instead of just moving their releases and/or recordings to the right artist and letting them be auto-removed. This also adds the misspelled version as an alias for the artist, which makes it less likely that the wrong name will be recreated as a separate artist in the future.

As a general principle, if you can solve an issue with any other way than a removal, you should avoid removing an entity (or leaving an empty entity behind for it to be auto-removed).

For instructions on how to merge releases, see this how-to. Most other entities can be merged in mostly the same way, by clicking Merge on all their sidebars and then picking the entity the rest should be merged into.