Delayed MuckRock Requests

Jun 27

Michael MorisyUncategorized No Comments

While building out MuckRock, we’ve come across some new and challenging problems, few of which we’ve seen before, personally, and many which are completely novel. We’re going to occasionally make mistakes, but one of our goals is to fix them as quickly and professionally as possible, while being as transparent and above board with both what went wrong and what we’re doing to fix it.

With that in mind, we sent out the following e-mail this morning to a small number of users:

Hi,

During routine checks on MuckRock’s servers and systems, we discovered
two serious errors that have delayed some requests or updates. The
first was an error that bounced back incoming e-mails on some requests
(about 3% of requests), and the second error disrupted outgoing faxes
from some recently filed requests (about 1% of requests). We take
these issues very seriously, and have refiled or contacted each agency
involved with affected requests, which in about 5 cases has involved
refiling requests. One or more of your requests has been affected.

For the most part, the information delayed was interim updates or
requests for the current status of a request. We have since reworked a
lot of our automatic filing tools to better capture irregular
activity, to better log all incoming and outgoing messages, and to
ensure that similar problems don’t occur in the future.

There is no need to refile or take any action on your part, but if you
have any questions or feedback, please contact me directly. Any as
always, if you would like to take a special action on any request
you’ve filed or have questions about its status, please click “Submit
Correction” on the request page, type in the action you’d like to
take, and we’ll take care of the rest.

Thanks again for helping us grow what we believe is a powerful tool
for transparency, and we are deeply sorry for the inconvenience.

Best,

Michael Morisy
Co-Founder, MuckRock.com

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