I think that is a good idea!
First of all, contributors to the the topic about mail suspension alerts are doing an excellent job of keeping the Postal Monitor updated, which applies to origin-desination pairs. However, due to lack ot information from respective postal services, the Postal Monitor may not, and is not intended to in the first place, reflect the actual situation of postal routes or travel times.
Now let’s divide destinations into 4 categories. Whether a destination is common or rare depends mainly on the numbers of users and postcards sent. Postal reliability depends on mainly the registration rate.
- D1: Common, postally reliable destinations
- D2: Common, postally unreliable destinations
- D3: Rare, postally reliable destinations
- D4: Rare, postally unreliable destinations
Also, divide one’s quota into two categories. There are multiple ways to allocate types of destination but now let’s consider one case.
- Q1: Normal quota for D1, D3 and D4
- Q2: Extra quota for D2
The number of slots Q2 will be set according to some rules, similar to the current quota increment rules. In addition, different and probably more lenient rules in relation to user deactivation (say, maximum number of allowed expired sent postcards Sx) may also apply. Once a common destination falls short of certain predefined threasholds, it will be moved to the second category.
In this case, the sender can choose whether to send to Q2 destinations and thus can afford greater peace of mind.
Further on the special case of “rare” origins, the address assignment mechanism itself does not differentiate between new and old users, so at least one incentive (to game the system) is removed. Lumping “rare” destinations into the first category is just based on the assumption that they are so rare that people wouldn’t care about their postal reliability.
Technical difficulties and priority issues aside, these revisions seem to be fair across the board and compatible with the Postal Monitor, and moreover, likely to enhance user experience.
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Now that the future of China user group rests entirely on the batch of postcards sent between mid-April and mid-June, let’s hope that Postcrossing is not cornering itself into a bailout or lifting the suspension prematurely which in turn will cast the necessity of the suspension in doubt. As long as postal services across the world are still accepting postcards to China, individual users are in good place to decide whether to send a card there. In this vein, a second category of slots for postally unreliable destinations seems to make sense and also enables continued monitoring of the delivery situation.