I listen to all the audio beforehand and label all the takes, the same names as the video takes. I just didn't know you could merge them prior, and would wait to put the audio takes in, after the video edit of a scene. But I always check the audio and label it before editing.
You do What?! Let me see if I've understood your workflow correctly: You/Your friend/Some producer has hired (paid/unpaid/whatever) a PSM, who has set a level, pressed a red button, monitored (carefully listened to) all the recordings and labelled all the audio files. In post, the first thing you do is listen to all the audio files again and re-label them all again. For an average 90 minute feature you're likely to have at least several hundred audio files, probably totalling say 30 hours (or far more). So listening, identifying and re-labelling all these audio files is going to take anything from a few days to 2 weeks or so.
Let's look at the professional workflow: The PSM and someone from the camera department spend about 10 minutes in pre-production agreeing a file labelling convention. On set, at the beginning of every take, someone spends about 10 seconds filling out and using the Slate and at the end of every take a few seconds is spent naming the video and sound files and making an entry in the picture and sound logs. The End. No going through all the audio files again and repeating the same job for a second time!
In other words, you seem perfectly happy to waste a week or so re-doing an already completed job but don't want to use a slate because it "wastes" a few seconds per take! If that's not absurd enough, you then go on a public forum, contradict those providing sensible/professional advice and advise someone getting started to take your approach. This seems to be a step beyond your usually more minor brain farts and I'm starting to wonder if maybe you're OK?
How on earth do you know if there's a problem with your audio, thus making the take unusable without ADR, if you don't sync before editing?
To be honest, it's not so uncommon in a professional workflow for the picture editor to edit mainly with the camera audio and leave identifying and sorting out any problems in the external recorder's audio to the audio post team. However, and in this case it's a big however: 1. The camera audio is usually quite usable for this purpose because it's usually a feed from the PSM's mixer and 2. The files on the recorder and camera use the same labelling convention, were locked to the same time-code and have matching metadata. In this case, it's a relatively quick, automated process in audio post to substitute all the edited camera dialogue in the exported OMF/AAF with the recorder's audio ... with the additional benefit of also being able to pull in any alt takes and/or other mic channels automatically with just a couple of mouse clicks. Although it's relatively expensive to hire time-code equipment for filming, this expense in a professional situation is more than offset by the time/cost saved by the picture editor only having to pull in and work with the camera's sound and by the time/cost savings in audio post. Obviously though at the no/lo budget level where few use time-code lock, it's better to use a copy of the recorder's audio when picture editing and not use the camera audio at all except as a backup or guide, as you and others have described.
G