A newly launched WNS?

 

 

 

A Relaunched WNS? New Circulars?

Victor Manta, PWO

“The National Sex Offender Public Website - coordinated by the Department of Justice - enables every citizen to search the latest information from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and numerous Indian tribes for the identity and location of known sex offenders.” Source

Please consider the idea that instead of this database, a database of all non sex offenders was compiled and published, and it was stipulated that all those citizen who were not listed in it can be considered sex offenders. Would it be legal, reliable, and useful? Surely not, and this for so many more or less obvious reasons.

WNS resembles the database of all non sex offenders. Its basic idea is that all stamps that are not listed on WNS should be considered illegal. The problem, of course, is how to identify and list all legal stamps. WNS was introduced on 1 January 2002, it cost millions and it was proven that it was not possible to create a complete database of legit stamps. For this reason, WNS cannot be used as a guide for identifying the illegal stamps. And it will never be, as often explained on this site, this despite WNS's creators claim:

“The WNS website is therefore a reference tool and a control, by omission, of stamps that have been issued illegally and labels that are claimed to be stamps. The WNS is one of the tools the UPU has introduced, helping the Posts and the philatelic market as a whole to combat this problem.” Source

Taking example from the Sex Offender website, the WNS should list the offending, illegal stamps, those that rarely appear on the UPU Circulars, and add much more to them, as it is seen on the philatelic online market.

Ms. Olfa Mokkadem (UPU IB Philately & IRC Programme Manager) wrote recently to what can be named “The Illegal Stamps Fighting Group”: “For the remark concerning the circulars on the WNS, this site is currently being renewed and will be launched soon.”

Unfortunately, it is already possible to anticipate the results of an updated WNS, by quoting a French proverb: “Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose” (the more it changes, the more it is the same). But let us hope that I am wrong.

Meanwhile the UPU IB Illegal Stamps Circulars reappeared, after a long break, on the UPU site, see here. It has been asked for a long by the PWO and finally they reappeared, and even in six languages. The last of them, Nigeria, has the many images presented under a new link, common for all language versions.

Unfortunately, the text of the newest, Nigeria Circular is wrong (uses a circular reference instead of a link to images):

“Images of all these illegal issues are is available on the UPU website at www.upu.int/en/Universal-Postal-Union/Activities/Philately -IRCs/Philatelic -circulars. Source

Even if I signaled this error to Ms. Olfa Mokkadem, so far nothing was done to correct the Nigeria Circulars, I suppose because they were already signed by the UPU Director of Logistics (Mr. Jean-Alexandre Ducrest) and cannot be changed easily anymore.

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