https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=67477
--- Comment #35 from jeremyb <[email protected]> --- (In reply to Fæ from comment #33) > I do not know who the Royal Mail use as a supplier for deliveries in > California, Why do you mention California? The shipment was addressed to eqiad (Virginia). (or else we have bigger problems than I realized) > Executive summary: Disk sent correctly to USA, disk received correctly, disk > "lost" by WMF goods-in supplier. > > The Wellcome USB disk was sent and received correctly as legally verified by > Royal Mail (with a perfectly correct address as advised by the WMF, I have a > photograph of the package, and with postage paid for by WikiprojectMed). The > WMF appears to have a long term issue with its goods-in management > contractor, as if a delivery is not through one of their preferred > "friendly" U.S. delivery services, they manage to always lose the package. > In the U.K. this would be considered racketeering and I'm amazed that the > WMF has put up with this behaviour from their supplier for a period of years. I'm not sure what you mean by contractor here. The WMF does not own the building that the shipment was addressed to. They rent server cages/rackspace/etc. in that building directly from the people that manage the receipt of shipments. WMF (and I guess many other customers of that datacenter too) is unable to staff the delivery point at all hours when packages are accepted so the datacenter accepts them on behalf of tenants if and only if they are delivered to the right place and with a tracking number that has been registered with the receiving staff in advance. > if the WMF insist that all deliveries must happen through named > delivery agents due to a "closed shop" policy from her supplier, I believe at least 4 different carriers have successfully delivered to eqiad. I think "racketeering" (as you call it) is probably not the issue in this case. > I suggest > that the she pays for the delivery rather than expecting GLAM institutions > to collaborate in activities that may fail to meet UK charity law, and be > more expensive than standard international Royal Mail from the UK. I don't think there's anything wrong with the way this shipment was handled on WMF end. You were clearly told by multiple people (across 3 separate mails) which carriers we already knew worked (fedex/ups/dhl) and yet you insisted that Royal Mail would somehow end up being delivered by DHL. I thought it was more likely that Royal Mail would become USPS. Maybe we'll never find out exactly what happened. I believe the problem with USPS is that they deliver to the wrong place. (Maybe the building has multiple entrances and all other carriers have learned where to go but USPS is unwilling to adapt? not sure) Domestic letters in the US are returned to their sender free of charge if the address is wrong or delivery is refused. I guess the same happens with domestic packages? but I have no idea about international shipments. (In reply to Bawolff (Brian Wolff) from comment #34) > I'm under the impression its not the contractor who has the problem, but > that its actually illegal under united states law for usps to deliver to > them (usa is a weird place...). huh, maybe that explains them delivering to the wrong place. I may go read that law someday... > In any case, you were told in several places not to send via usps or the > disk wouldnt get there. That part is on you. right, see above re process for future: (can we move this part to a mailing list? [[mail:glam]]?) I think it's reasonable to expect batch uploads to expend some of their own time/effort/bandwidth on an upload. (including making sure that the format is right with pairs of images and .txt files (complete file description pages in mediawiki syntax) with matching names) And in any case things do get lost in the mail in the normal course of running a mail service. There should always be a backup plan if you intend to coordinate timing with a scheduled event. (e.g. upload a subset or find a place with more bandwidth to do the upload from) Keep in mind that shipping an HDD or other media (CD, USB stick, etc.) requires a non-trivial amount of time and effort from datacenter staff and then developers (shell users). The gains from mailing vs. upload via internet will vary from location to location (some places have faster links than others) and maybe the option to have chapters handle some of these should be explored (comment 28). That would allow for some shipments to be domestic instead of international (or at least within EU instead of intercontinental). (would that make shipping more reliable? or at least cheaper?) I think that bug 48205 went pretty well (comments 11 through 18) and that it could be replicated for future uploads. -- You are receiving this mail because: You are the assignee for the bug. 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