New Web site policies (updated).
Effective this weekend, Commonweal is introducing some changes at its Web site. Probably the most significant change is that while stories from each current issue of the magazine remain available for free, almost all stories prior to the current issue, and our extensive searchable archive of past stories, are now only available to paying subscribers.
If you are already a paid subscriber to Commonweal in print, you can continue to receive free access to the Web site. You will, however, need to go through a one-time registration process that links your online login to your print subscription. You will need a recent issue of the magazine in print at hand so that you can find your print subscriber account number on the front cover. To keep your free access, please visit http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/my_account.php.
[Update: Some users are understandably having trouble with this step of the process. Your mailing label may have eight digits in the account number position. If so, only the first seven constitute your account number.]
If you are not a print subscriber, you can purchase an online-only subscription for $25/year. Just visit http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/my_account.php and complete the secure ordering process.
If you don’t wish to follow either of these paths, you are welcome to remain a reader of the free content on the site and to comment on dotCommonweal. You do not need to take any further action at this time if this is what you want to do.
Be advised that once the new system goes into effect, the username you chose when you registered with the site will appear with every comment you leave on the blog, along with the e-mail address you provided.
I clicked on the link recommended above to keep free access but all it brought up was a request for my user name (in English) and a request for my password (in French). Responding to these requests produced the same request form again with a small note in French saying my password had been modified. No request for any of the information on the cover of the magazine seems to be coming up, so perhaps someone should check the situation out.
Try it again–the system should be caught up now.
This new commenting system is awful — a post of mine just got lost because I wasn’t logged in. A helpful system would provide the user some *hint* of that fact (preferably before posting), but the new system just let me submit the post and THEN told me that a “Oops, a form field wasn’t filled in,” and gave no option for recovering the post (hitting “back” didn’t work). Also, as long as people are monkeying around with the system, why not add a “preview” option? And how about allowing some simple HTML, such as italics tags or bolding or even
?
Also, now my name appears as Patrick M, not Patrick Molloy. What happened?
Stuart,
We’re looking into the glitch you found. Keep us posted if you continue to have problems. (As for your other suggestions: well taken, and when we make futher adjustments in the coming months, I’d like to see these implemented. This revision was simply about access.)
Patrick.
“Patrick M” must be the username you chose when you first registered with the site. That’s what the system now displays. I changed your username to “Patrick Molloy.” See if that works.
It now works. Thanks.
Aren’t computer systems wonderful?
We have been following the instructions as best we can, but my husband and I have been totally frustrated in our efforts to register. The seven digit number as indicated on the pop-up instruction box is said to be “incorrect” no matter what we do, and the system has taken to not even recognizing his password anymore.
(The instruction about “verifying” one’s e-mail address and password seems to invite trouble. If someone types in the usual information, thinking that verifying it means typing it in again, up comes the useless information that someone already has that email address or password.)
This whole process is like Groundhog Day.
Must be a Catholic thing. When The Tablet made a similar change the same sort of problems turned up.
By the way, my last name now has a back slash in front of the apostrophe. Which is probably preferable to a message deleting me on the grounds that names don’t have apostrophes.
Finally, I just got a letter from Commonweal offering me a $25.00 subscription as a professional courtesy (just what is my profession that elicits such courtesy, I wondered). How does this relate to the $25.00 online only subscription?
This still isn’t working. It’s asking me to put in a new e-mail address and then a new password, and I have no idea why, since I just created these the other day.
It worked on the first shot. Next time I tried to log in, I rode around-and-around on a carousel, repeated problems. Then all of a sudden it worked. I wonder what the feast of St. Hadrian of Canterbury tomorrow will bring! Yes, I also have intermittent problems signing in on The Tablet.
Why should this be asking me to change my e-mail address?