Way back in 2022, we launched the ability for people to become members of The Autopian. It’s been awesome. In retrospect, it’s one of the best things we could have ever done. At the same time, we already had users in the form of commenters, which created a bit of a technical conundrum. The resolution of that conundrum has left us with a long list of accounts that do not seem active. Removing these accounts will probably not impact anyone, but there’s a small chance they will for a tiny percentage of readers.
If you are a member of the site or you signed up for your commenter/member/whatever account after 12/7/2022, then this should not affect you. If you signed up before 12/7/2022 and have not become a member, then there’s a chance you’ll need to re-register your account.
This is more information than most of you need to know, but I like to be transparent about changes being made to the website. We use Memberful as our membership platform, and it nicely ties in with our Content Management System (WordPress). When you create a Memberful account, it creates an account on the CMS side that matches, and when you log in, you’re doing a handshake between the two.
Because we had the CMS before Memberful, we had to migrate all of the existing accounts over to Memberful so they’d play nice together. On 12/7/2022, we did just that.
So that we can more effectively and efficiently communicate with readers who signed up for an account but are not members, we’re going to cleanse the list of anyone from this pre 12/7/2022 period. Many of these are spam accounts, and others are people who signed up to tell us some very important fact about, say, the Matra Rancho, and then vanished.
By removing them from Memberful, it just means that when we want to do an email to non-member commenters, there will be fewer people curious about who the heck we are and sending us to their spam folders. It won’t delete any comments and shouldn’t otherwise change anything on the site.
It’s possible that someone signed up for a commenter account before 12/7/2022 and isn’t a member. If that’s you, it shouldn’t be a big deal. If you get to the page and it says “account not found,” you can just reregister, and it should all work as before, although your comment may be held up in moderation the first time you try.
If anyone experiences any issues, you can always email me, and I’ll work to fix it. I did a spot check of the list of accounts being removed and didn’t find anyone who is actively commenting, but it’s a long list, so there may be a small number of individuals I missed.
Thank you for your understanding!
Top photo: Ford
I’ve been commenting regularly since literally day one, even got a couple COTD to my name, and now I can’t sign in anymore (on other browsers, obviously). “Oops” I guess. Will attempting to register again delete my comment history? Not that there’s any fine literature or precious memories that simply must be preserved in there, but this is pretty fucking obnoxious all around.
Note to self: in the future post some stupid shit on every article even if you have absolutely nothing of value to contribute, it’s the internet way.
I got nuked, but creating a new account with the same email found the old one and recovered it.
Are we still able to ask for a whitelist by commenting here?
I am assured by my wife that I have nothing worthwhile to say but I have (still) not accepted her judgement as final.
Also, some people here use a nickname as I once did. Mine somehow evaporated over time. Can I please have it back?
People commenting on Matras should get a COTM, automatically