You should be very careful if you are going through hundreds of artists, because some of them might be ‘hijacked’. Hijacked artist means that the entity was originally added as a different entity as it is now, which usually happens when artists share the same name. So for example editor 1 added the entry and added a release for the artist. Then editors 2, 3 and 4 added different releases, but all 3 of those were supposed to be credited to different artist. More editors then add more releases and on top of that someone adds an external link for the ‘incorrect’ artist.
An example of hijacked artist: Rogue (UK EDM Producer). This was originally some UK pop group called “Rouge” (first 2 edits), then someone added a release which belongs to Rouge (performance name for Tony Rapacioli), then someone added another release which belongs to Rouge (South-Asian trio) and then someone added a release which belongs to the UK EDM producer “Rogue” which is the current artist and was changed in https://musicbrainz.org/edit/20117655 (this is the edit that hijacked the artist for good). Since then the artist has over 20 releases so in this case it’s not worth to revert it to the original artist but I cleaned up the 2 releases that don’t belong to him, which were the first 2 releases that were added.
Most of the time it’s not worth to revert the artist to the original entity because it only has 1-3 releases that belong to the original artist compared to the ‘hijacked’ one that has way more releases/recordings and usually even some external links so it would take way longer. I don’t know if there is any official policy on this, whether to revert the artist to the original entry or just accept the fact that it is now the new artist and clean it up accordingly, guess it’s just a judgement call of which approach takes less time that should be used.
Basically what I’m saying is that if you are going through tons of artists you should check their current state (releases, recordings, relationships, external links) and compare it with the first entry in edit history and if there’s any contradicting stuff you should proceed with caution when adding Discogs links.