Talk:Operation Santa Claus

Proposing USPS Operation Santa draft

Hi editors, I'm Jonathan from the USPS. I've put together a draft that seeks to massively improve this article with proper sourcing and more clearly explain USPS Operation Santa and its rich history. Before I get into that, I wanted to make clear I have disclosed my COI on my user page and this article, which you can read more about here: User:Jonathan with U.S. Postal Service. Additionally, I've posted the draft I've put together for this article within my user space, which can be read here: USPS Operation Santa draft.

Below I will break down all the specific changes I've proposed:

• Renamed the article to USPS Operation Santa, which is the correct name of the program and is reflected in all of the proposed new citations provided.
• Removed the following citations: two archive links to operationsanta.com, Good Morning America, The Salvation Army, ABC7, and USA Today.
• Removed the Operation Santa Claus program in Alaska subsection and the See also subsection, as these have nothing to do with USPS Operation Santa. Removed the image of Santa and Mrs. Claus as well.
• Proposed the addition of a History section, and cited New York Daily News to describe former Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock's founding of the program.
• Cited USA Today and the official USPS Operation Santa website to describe how the program was opened up to the public in the 1940s.
• Cited CNN to note that the Postal Service digitized the program in 2017, adding additional sentence about how the digital version of the program allowed for letters addressed to Santa from across the country to be adopted online via the program's website.
• Cited TODAY to note the 2020 documentary Dear Santa about USPS Operation Santa.
• Cited ABC7 New York to add a sentence about Dear Santa, the Series, a documentary highlighting stories from letter writers and Postal Service employees. Then, cited Variety to note a season two of the documentary released in November 2024.
• Cited Newsweek to add a final sentence to the section about the USPS' collaboration with Toys R Us, who developed an online catalog where letter adopters can select, purchase, and ship gifts directly from.
• Proposed the addition of a Program operations section to explain exactly how the specifics of USPS Operation Santa work, starting with citing Newsweek to note the program accepts letters on a set date in September each year. Also cited the same source to further detail the address where letter writers can send their letters, and specifics on how the Postal Service recommends shipping the letters. Added a final sentence cited to the Clinton Herald to note that letters are anonymized and made available for adoption on the official USPS Operation Santa website.
• Added the USPS Operation Santa website to the External links section.

I understand this is a big request, and I appreciate any editor who comes by to evaluate the request. Please let me know if you have any feedback, and thank you very much! Jonathan with U.S. Postal Service (talk) 18:09, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

Hey, I don't have time to look over all of these but I wanted to flag that a) this isn't the process to request an article be moved and b) per WP:COMMONNAME, the technically 'correct' name isn't necessarily what the article gets called. For instance, we haven't moved 'Twitter' to 'X'. OXYLYPSE (talk) 20:46, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback User:OXYLYPSE. Although I understand this isn't the process for moving an article, I thought it would be wise to allow editors to look at the draft before putting forward a page move request.

Also, thank you for pointing out WP:Commonname. Per all of the sourcing in the draft I've put forward, the project is most commonly known as USPS Operation Santa. The name change would help disambiguate from other “Operation Santa Claus” events that other organizations run. Jonathan with U.S. Postal Service (talk) 23:07, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Hey @Jonathan with U.S. Postal Service.

Yes, WP:COMMONNAME refers to what something is commonly called. It's not quite an invitation to remove all references of an 'old' name, add sources to support the 'new' name and then proclaim "this is the common name", which seems a little like what you're trying to do by removing this source. Additionally, per the USPS blog it seems like it started as Operation Santa Claus and was later "sometimes called Operation Santa". There are many sources still referring to this as Operation Santa Claus. I'm not trying to be difficult, and I'm not saying the name shouldn't be changed, but there appears to be a clear agenda here from the USPS.

I agree with removing the salvation army section, but it would be nice to replace the image with something.

Other than that, there are some good bits in the draft that would be worth including, but it needs some copyediting for tone and POV first. For example, the draft says the decision to go digital was so more people could participate but the CNN 2020 source says it was due to Covid. The draft's history section just seems to be a copy of the About page, but I appreciate there are only so many ways to write the same things. OXYLYPSE (talk) 07:53, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Jonathan with U.S. Postal Service

I found some things, which you should improve:

I find the third paragraph of the history section needs attention as there are multiple problems with it. Here are the things i found:

The first sentence needs a rewrite and maybe a second source as the CNN source doesn't give a reason for the begin of the digitalisation and the sentence contradicts the source, as stated in the comment above. The second sentence should be rewritten, because there is no information in the article that the program was first tested, but it's written as it was mentioned before. The position of the third sentence isn't optimal and should be rewritten or repositioned. Synonimany (talk) 10:33, 20 November 2024 (UTC)