There's a function within Koha two take two authority records and combine them into one authority record. Koha refers to this as merging. That's a good name for that and doesn't confuse people.

But then there's also a cron job that takes changes made to authority records and pushes them out to bibs. Koha also refers to this as merging. This *does* confuse people. They see a cron called "merge_authorities.pl" and assume it's going to clean up duplicate authorities or something.

So I'd propose renaming the cron and the various system preferences that refer to the cron, though I understand that's a change to a very well-established Koha feature.

I understand that it is confusing, but changing a cronjob name means that in every installations people might have to change their cronjob setup... I am not sure if we should do this. And if we do it, maybe it should be a gradual process turning the current script into a wrapper that sends a deprecation warning to the logs for one release and asks you to switch.

From ExLibris:
Authorities - Preferred Term Correction – This job performs preferred term correction on all bibliographic records that are linked to authority records using the Authorities - Link BIB Headings job. For example, if a bibliographic record contains the non-preferred term “Narcotics, Control of,” and the associated authority record contains the preferred term “Drug control,” the Authorities – Preferred Term Correction job replaces “Narcotics, Control of” with the preferred term “Drug control.” Bibliographic records are also updated with any subsequent updates to authority records.

=> The general term updating is used here in connection with preferred term correction.

OCLC: Once you control a heading (and add or replace the record in WorldCat), the heading in the bibliographic record is automatically updated whenever the linked authority record changes.

(In reply to Katrin Fischer from comment #2)
> I understand that it is confusing, but changing a cronjob name means that in
> every installations people might have to change their cronjob setup... I am
> not sure if we should do this. And if we do it, maybe it should be a gradual
> process turning the current script into a wrapper that sends a deprecation
> warning to the logs for one release and asks you to switch.

We have renamed cron jobs in the past. But I agree that we should not do that too often ;) In this case I think it is more important to update interface, documentation etc. and even the routine name (C4::AuthoritiesMarc::merge) than renaming the script and cronjobs.

(In reply to Marcel de Rooy from comment #5)
> We have renamed cron jobs in the past. But I agree that we should not do
> that too often ;) In this case I think it is more important to update
> interface, documentation etc. and even the routine name
> (C4::AuthoritiesMarc::merge) than renaming the script and cronjobs.

Agreed. Having a legacy script name isn't too big of a problem, if you can open that file and see that it's about processing heading updates in bib records from authority records.

While the documentation has great warning notes about the actual function of this cron, I agree with the previous comments that renaming it will reduce confusion. Any plan, however slow, that moves us towards this end would be welcome.

Even if the cron is not renamed, it would be helpful to rename the system preference AuthorityMergeLimit to AuthorityLinkLimit or something similar and provide clarifying language in the system preference description.

These system preferences should be considered for clarification/renaming:

AuthorityMergeLimit
AuthorityMergeMode