When I right click an ASP.NET MVC solution and select the "Publish" option, the final output it generates contains several empty top-level folders. For instance, the "Service References" folder that gets automatically added when you add a service reference to a web app is generated without any files in it. Why are these folders generated at all if there's no content in them? Is there a way to let Visual Studio know to not bother publishing them?

This isn't a big deal since it doesn't really affect the app (and before deploying I can always delete the empty folders), but it's a little annoying.