Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Yes. When a user/author is deleted in Joomla, their articles remain in the system, but the created_by ID becomes orphaned (or turns to 0). Currently, in Joomla 5, the batch processing tool no longer allows changing the author. If an administrator opens such an article, the author field is empty or invalid.

Describe the solution you'd like
It would be much more elegant and user-friendly if Joomla automatically detects that the current author ID is invalid/deleted when the article is being saved. In this case, Joomla should automatically fallback and assign the ID of the current logged-in user who is actively saving the article as the new author (created_by), instead of throwing an error or leaving it blank/broken.

Describe alternatives you've considered
Accessing phpMyAdmin to run manual SQL update queries or opening hundreds of articles manually to click save. Both methods are inefficient for regular users.