Bring your old account over

If you contributed to Bookogs, Filmogs, Posterogs, Gearogs or Comicogs, the work you did is still here. The databases were kept and they are the catalogs on ctlgs. What is not here is your account, and nothing is tied to you until someone ties it.

This page is the whole procedure. It is short, it happens on the forum, and it is the only route — there is no form on the site and no address to write to.

Do I need a new account?

Yes. Accounts here are new. Sign in to ctlgs with a forum account at forum.ctlgs.org, and that one account covers both the forum and the catalogs, so you are not keeping two.

Make the account first. Everything below attaches old work to an account that already exists, so there has to be one to attach it to.

Does anything from my old account carry over automatically?

No. Signing up with the same name you used years ago does nothing by itself, and neither does using the same email. The old records and the new accounts are two separate things, and a person has to connect them.

There are two halves to that, and both get done together:

• Your contribution history — the entries you created and edited, credited back to you.
• Your collection and wantlist — the items you had marked as owned or wanted, put back into your lists here.

You do not have to ask for them separately. Ask once and both are done.

What do I post on the forum to get linked?

Two facts, in a post on the forum:

1. The username you had on the old site.
2. Which site it was — Bookogs, Filmogs, Posterogs, Gearogs or Comicogs. If you were on more than one, say so and list them.

That is genuinely all of it. "I was somename on Posterogs and Bookogs, could you link them to this account" is a complete request. Post it under your new account so it is obvious which account to attach things to.

Two things that help if you have them: any rough sense of how many items were in your collection, and the email address the old account used. Neither is required, and nobody will ask you for a password.

How long does it take, and is anything lost while I wait?

It is done by hand, one person at a time, by someone matching old records against your new account. So it is not instant, and no promise about how long it takes would be worth making. If a week or two goes by with nothing, reply in your own thread to nudge it rather than starting a new one.

Nothing is lost in the meantime: the entries you wrote are already in the catalog and already public. What is missing is the line saying you wrote them. Nothing is sitting in a queue waiting to be restored, and nothing degrades while you wait.

The same goes for a collection list. The items you owned exist as catalog entries whether or not they are in your lists yet, and linking puts your lists back on top of them. You can also start adding copies by hand now; linking later does not wipe out what you have added since.

What about my old password?

It does not carry over, and there is nothing to recover. Your ctlgs sign-in is a forum password you set yourself, new, and no old credentials were brought across — which is the only responsible thing to do with passwords from a site that is no longer online.

For the same reason, nobody here will ever ask you for an old password to prove who you are. If someone does, it is not us.

What if someone else already has my old username?

Pick a different name for the new account. The linking is done from what you tell the forum, not by matching names, so your old work attaches to whatever account you are signed in as — the names do not have to agree.

If two people turn up claiming the same old username, it gets worked out in the open in the forum thread, with whatever either of you can point to. It happens rarely and it is not a crisis.

Where do I read about my old site?

There is a page for each, covering what came across and what still needs work: Bookogs, Filmogs, Posterogs, Gearogs and Comicogs.

If it has been a few years and you want the current picture before you post, how ctlgs works covers what a catalog, an entry and a copy are here, and what stays private.