I think this type of conclusion is precisely why that post was shut down. The first thing that Postcrossing uses for updating the postal monitor is
And that thread became a lot of people speculating and citing anecdotal evidence after purposefully and knowingly going against the current official USPS statement. The official USPS stance is currently no mail route from the USA to Russia. With extra steps and expense to the sender (i.e. UN Geneva or the German postal system) sending mail appears doable consistently but I can understand why Postcrossing doesn’t want their forum used as a place to encourage going against official statements from postal systems around the world.
I for one found the information in that thread really helpful, as there are a lot of times when mail between two countries is suspended for non-political reasons (such as when USA stopped sending mail to Australia a couple of years ago simply due to a lack of flights). There are several places that Australia doesn’t send to right now simply due to logistical reasons, and because of the helpful info in that thread I have ordered stamps from the UN to be able to send mail to some penpals.
I totally agree with you that removing that sort of info goes against the stated missions of Postcrossing, and that it would be understandable if you were genuinely contravening an embargo but working around a mail suspension is not the same thing.
There are also many many individual posts on this forum where people are advocating the “VIA GERMANY” method (presumably without German stamps) so having an in-depth discussion of legitimate ways to get around suspensions that actually provide proper compensation to all postal services is surely a much better way forward than leaving people unaware of more legitimate options.
I believe the only reason there is a discussion about mail to Russia here is in an effort to clarify why related content was removed — it’s difficult to understand why the content was removed (or argue that it shouldn’t be) without the context.
Yes, the question I asked about the forum was why the post got removed, and then I asked for clarification about the rules it allegedly violated because I believe the post was entirely within the forum rules.
Yes, this was a good place for the question. And you did get answers. But if you and others want a long discussion about it, this thread isn’t a good place for that.
Unfortunately the right place for the discussion was wrongfully deleted due to what appears to be a misunderstanding. How can I appeal the removal of the thread in question?
“You may not misuse the website for illegal or unauthorized purposes.”
I don’t know what the message was, as there seems to be (or have been) many topics, but each time I see topics where it’s organized some sort of “breaking of regulations”, I feel there could be something wrong. Someone can mistakenly think you have some sort of authorisation to organise the mail routes. Someone can mistakenly think it’s organised by Postcrossing.
It can be simply safest to not let it be there. Or they are thinking more about it, and it’s removed for the moment.
The messages you get when the post is removed are automated I believe, so there is no specific one reason at once. Sometimes when my post were flagged and I asked something, it took really long time (in my opinion ) to get the personal answer.
Will the moderation team be providing a clearer answer on why the thread was deleted or can’t been re-instated? The reason cited above was that it contravened an embargo, but it has now been established that it doesn’t (as there is no such embargo).
There is a lot of speculation from non-moderators here, but that wouldn’t be necessary if the moderators were able to provide clarification for us all to understand.
I think the problem here is that there is a misunderstanding around the current disruption of mail traveling from the USA to Russia. There is nothing illegal about it, there is no embargo, there are no sanctions on private mail, the USPS simply doesn’t have the supply chain in place to transport large volumes of mail to Russia. Everything is above board here, there is nothing nefarious going on, it’s just a logistical issue and nothing more.
That’s all from me regarding the thread deletion topic on this page. I will send an email outlining my side of the story and will respect the decision that is reached. Thank you.
Trevor hit the nail on the head here - and certainly more concisely than I probably could have. Allow me to elaborate a little here (and apologies in advance for the length). Given the number of direct messages I received relative to my learnings and the amount of time that went into my efforts (and the efforts of several other members), it’s important that these things be said.
It was my long thread experimenting with different methods of getting cards from USA into Russia. Among the methods were using Deutsche Post stamps, writing “VIA _____” under the address, sending directly from USA to Russia, sending from USA to UK (Royal Mail Special Postmark Department", and a few others.
Specifically related to the instances where I was experimenting with “VIA GERMANY” and “VIA UNITED KINGDOM” which does not involve using stamps from the intermediary country, to suggest that this is equivalent to “not using enough postage” is nonsensical. The forwarding of mail from these countries into Russia was done at the discretion of the respective postal system. Each country’s postal system could just as easily discard these articles, sent them to their respective “undeliverable mail” offices, sent them back to United States Postal Service’s official "Dead Letter Office, or forward them along. I have sent several emails to Deutsche Post and Royal Mail asking about this practice, in concurrence with the experiments, and have yet to receive a reply. Simply stated - the respective country was under no obligation to forward the mail Nevertheless, I am grateful that they did.
I have yet to find a single official document citing “USPS MAIL” as an official sanction of the United States Government against the governments of Russia and Belarus. I keep reading posts on here where folks keep using words like “embargo” and “sanction”, and my head is spinning because not one person who cites these things has ever referenced. The most up-to-date repository of information related to sanctions that I’ve continued to track since early 2022 was HERE - directly from the STATE.GOV website.
I received dozens of messages from folks (almost exclusively American) asking about how it would be possible to get letters / postcards to Russians, citing that it’s especially important that people continue talking and supporting people during these tumultuous times. This was the catalyst for my looking into the matter, as I believe personal correspondence with folks is especially important right now given the current situation Never once were my efforts political in nature or were they ignorant of the facts of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. I never felt the need to say this because it seemed quite obvious, but I have been vehemently against the war in Ukraine, and I have continued to support Ukrainian postcrossers. The only difference is I also see the dire need to support Russian postcrossers as well, and will not remain ignorant to the facts of their circumstances.
Throughout my experimentation, not once did I receive a direct message from a user citing their concerns with what I was doing! I feel pretty let down on several fronts here. Had one of the persons who expressed concern or disagreement with our efforts reached out, it could have been an informative exchange in which all persons would likely have benefitted (at least I now see that there are people who misunderstand “embargos” and "Sanctions” and are confusing logistical limitations with one of the two). Rather than having meaningful discourse, people flag something? How does that make any sense in a forum for a project that is rooted in human connection!? I’m also let down by whichever admins reviewed and removed the post, as it seems like it would have been a fine opportunity to reinforce having critical conversations with each other, through direct message or however necessary. Instead, I receive a generic "Your post has been removed” and had to reach out for explanation. Come on folks - we’re better than this, are we not?
Yes, USPS is not currently “officially” delivering mail to Russia and Belarus. United States (74,576 members) and Russia (115,197 members) are among the most affected here. Cards can still be sent to Russia and Belarus directly, and I’d bet it would be through the exact same routes traveled when writing “VIA”. Continuing to reference “sanctions” related to the mail won’t make them exist. They simply don’t. Folks who flagged the post for this reason, and other related posts, are misinformed. Postcrossing admins got this one wrong. I respect the heck out of the admins - truly! But you got this one wrong.
Then if the forum is not a place for discussion, what is it for then? The thread where I started this specific discussion was removed. Had they been considered fully and with all the facts, it’s likely we wouldn’t be having this discussion here. Secondary questions here are about why specific posts have been removed, and what the review process is for these things. Given responses to various inquiries continue citing violation of postcrossing guidelines via violation of non-existent USPS-specific sanctions, questions still remain, which is why the conversation continues here. Our questions are about how the forum “works”, and expressions of recent instances where it hasn’t.
Whenever my message have been flagged, no one ever contacted me, nor asked about did they understand me correctly.
I agree, it is often unclear what is the main reason, especially if the message is long. It takes effort from the flagged to clear it, I know.
But, if there still were those “via Germany” etc left, it could be enough reason to remove the thread. Almost same as encouraging sending underpaid mail, and leave the responsibility to others.
Also it’s advised to flag, not start conversating with and especially replying to those messages that you feel are “wrong” (because it makes it more work to clean it). Some can be afraid to contact another member, their language is not good enough and wrong word is taken as the point of the discussion, or their personality is attacked, to forgot the topic. Someone maybe isn’t sure if it’s ok or not, so they flag. Also someone can just flag out of not liking you or your idea, sadly.
I think you have written what you needed to say, now it starts to repeat the same thing, which also puts the messages in danger to being flagged (this is been told to me).
I’m sure it’s now clear you wait for an answer, so give it time, maybe they wait all moderators read the thread? Maybe they don’t agree what should be done.
It’s not been many days yet.
And generally about forum and flagging, I see often the ones who are flagged react angrily (or sounding so), even accusingly, like their message shouldn’t be flagged. This makes people afraid to communicate, I have sometimes told I flagged a message, and the reason, and it’s taken super angrily. I tell it, because I know it’s often unclear what/why someone flagged it, and also when I write it, it will be more known, it’s ok to flag.
I never said that the forum wasn’t a place for discussion. I just said that I don’t think this specific thread (which is dedicated to asking and answering questions about the forum) isn’t the best suited place for long discussions. It would be a shame if other questions drowned because of the discussion.
I couldn’t disagree more. If one sees something they don’t like or aren’t sure about, it makes the most sense to first try and discuss it rather than flagging it and bombarding moderators with what could have otherwise been hashed out vis discussion. If a person becomes hostile and antagonistic, that’s the time to start flagging. Uncertainty is rampant in many things I read in the forum. If each person flagged everything they didn’t understand, I can’t imagine a legion of moderators could keep up, at least not in any meaningful capacity. I understand that people may not understand something relative to their primary language, but would bet that most people have that self awareness and wouldn’t flag something because they simply didn’t understand it and “weren’t sure”. In essence, flagging posts without understanding relative facts causes far more problems than it resolves. Flagging would serve the forum better in instances of egregious behavior so those could be promptly (and rightfully) removed.
The core issue here is that folks don’t seem to understand that there are no sanctions on USPS mail, and it’s being confuses with current mail restrictions in place. This issue was exacerbated then by moderators hastily removing the post without considering the facts. None of this would have even come up had anyone reached out citing their concerns. If, after discussing things, any person still disagreed or had concerns, then of course they should have flagged it. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the sequence of events.
Ah, but see - It’s not the same, nor is it “almost the same”, is it? It’s a red herring argument. At present, my understanding is that under Universal Postal Union rules, the USPS would in fact be compensating the Deutsche Post for their part in delivering mail, regardless of whether or not somebody explicitly pays Deutsche Post by adding one or more of their stamps (thanks for the information @Angelthepup22). Per my research, despite there being current mail restrictions in place (related to the logistics of transporting mail, and not related to any current U.S. Government sanction), mail is successfully traveling direct from USA to Belarus and Russia.
Specifically, writing “VIA (country)” under an address cheats no one. Nobody is actually certain how (or why) it works. But it has been working, somewhat miraculously. If the folks working for Deutsche Post choose to forward one of these pieces of mail, that’s solely their choice, same as a choice to reject such pieces of mail. I think many folks would express gratitude and appreciation for this if only we knew who exactly to direct it towards?
By that logic, should I have flagged your latest reply? Using your words, I feel you “are wrong”. Does it make much sense for me to unnecessarily get moderators involved here? To me, it absolutely doesn’t, therefore I’m using my words to further understand and discuss with you so that we may both better understand each other.
A “flag first” mentality somewhat breaks the system by unnecessarily calling on the limited staff to “come and take a look”. Occuring in high volumes, it likely limits the amount of time they can spend on a single concern, and things surely get missed, aren’t understood fully before deciding on, and the quality of the review arguably suffers.
Is there a way to hide entire categories or tags of posts? Specifically, the preview and top section of the ‘Postcrossing’ forum category are often full of requests to send cards to schools, from the ‘Education’ sub-category. I would like to be able to hide the Education sub-category so that the requests are hidden entirely (or ideally view them with the ‘Trades, Requests, and Offers’ category), making the non-request discussions related to Postcrossing more visible to me.
Edit: I ‘muted’ the Education sub-category so they no longer show if I click into the ‘Postcrossing’ forum section, but they still show up as the previewed posts on the ‘Categories’ home page which means they’re often all I see previewed from the Postcrossing category — is there a way to hide them for myself?
) to get the personal answer.