Talk:List of postal services abroad

Inclusion Criteria Question-Foreign Soil versus Territorial

What is the exact inclusion criteria for this list as there are several entries that don't quite fit the bill as well as entries that are obviously missing. These disconnects stem from the difference between operating a post office on foreign soil versus operating a post office on your own country's territory. A couple of examples:

• Philippines (US Administration) 1899 - 1945 the Phillippines during this period was US Territory and not a Foreign Post. (Should these territorial posts be excluded??)
• Army Post Offices (APO) and Fleet Post Offices (FPO) - indeed a great many of these post offices are operated on foreign soil under treaty conditions. (Should these be included??)

--Mike Cline (talk) 16:38, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

This is a little unclear to me as well. It seems to me that these two examples are quite different if I understand their functions correctly. In the Philippines it is my understanding that the US operated postal service was also the postal administration used by everyone in the same way that the US produced Philippine currency (Peso notes printed and issued by the US Government and looking quite similar in design and manufacture to US Dollar denominated notes) was used locally as well and thus probably should not be included in the list if it was not operated along side another separate local postal administration. I would think the APO/FPO system should probably also not be included either because as it is operated strictly to service US military personnel and activities and is not available for use by local populations for postal services. If my understandings are correct, I would guess both of these should be left off the list albeit for different reasons.(Centpacrr (talk) 15:23, 13 August 2008 (UTC))

Mike, I did see your note but wanted to consider the matter through. I think the best way forward would be to revise the description a little to include, rather than exclude some services. If we are to be exclusionists, then where will the excluded services be listed, is there even is a place for them. The two examples you have noted technically are "postal services abroad". I don't see anything that means postal services were operated to the inclusion, or exclusion, of local services. It seem that depended on the local situation, though a local service may have been running simultaneously. Do you think otherwise? ww2censor (talk) 16:36, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Ww2Censor-Centpaccr - Thanks. I do think that revising the description is the way to make this list better. I don't really want to exclude anything, but was making the point that given the current description, there were disconnects. Unfortunately, there's probably not any consistency as to how many of these extraterritorial postal services were run. I don't think the criteria as to who had access to any given postal service (locals or foreigners) is relevant because that would be a treaty detail. Apart from APOs and FPOs, I am most familar with the foriegn postal offices in Turkey during the WWI era and am pretty sure that local turkish citizens could not use any of the foreign post offices in lieu of their national system. It is clear though that the PI and Guam were US Territories and not foreign post offices, just as mail in Alaska prior to 1959 was US territorial mail, not a foreign post. On the APO/FPO question, these are Status of Forces (a treaty) based and are clearly on the same plane as the British Post Office in Constantinople during WWI era. We just need to find a way to write the list criteria that addresses all these types of posts. Unfortunately, I am sure we've allow a bit of philatelic bias into this, instead of looking purely from a postal service issue. That can be corrected. Thanks for the thoughts.--Mike Cline (talk) 17:15, 13 August 2008 (UTC)