Great post Jack. I think most contesters would like to use the scores as a
meaningful indicator of how their efforts and stations, in general and more or
less, rank and compare with others in their class. There are many impressive
stations and ops in NA but unfortunately ops in the rest of the world cannot
use the final scores as a meaningful tool to compare their efforts with their
NA competitors. And it's far more unfortunate for the NA ops who are deprived
of that opportunity with all but themselves.
73 Bob HS0ZIA
On Friday, November 29, 2013 9:05 AM, Jack Haverty. <k3fiv@arrl.net> wrote:
IMHO, it's necessary to understand what a scoring system is intended to
measure, before you can judge whether or not it is "fair", or even if it is
accomplishing that purpose.
I used to think that scores measured primarily radio skills. Some QSOs are
harder to make than others, and require more skill, so they provide more
points. At the end of the competition, whoever had the most points was "best"
at doing whatever the score was measuring - which was some kind of radio skill
depending on the particular focus of the contest.
But in this forum I've learned that scoring had other purposes. Perhaps it was
to encourage more rare locations to be on the air. Or encourage more people
to compete. Or ...?
It strikes me that any discussion of scoring should be based on what the score
is intended to measure. In many of today's contests, it seems to me that some
of the things that are now being measured don't have much to do with radio
skills. For example, the ability to stay awake for 48 hours is just one such
"skill" that seems to have a dominating effect on scores. Or the ability to
travel to a nearby location where the points flow more freely.
Similarly, as noted recently, there are lots of QSOs which are awarded 3 points
but seem much easier to complete than other 2 or 1 point QSOs.
So, what exactly is the scoring system supposed to be measuring? My personal
preference is that it should measure radio skills, and the person with the best
score should be considered the best at use of such skills. But there's many
other possibilities.
73,
/Jack de K3FIV
On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Bob Kupps <n6bk@yahoo.com> wrote:
Hi and thanks for all the comments.
>
>I am persuaded by the arguments in favor of retaining the 2 point rule for NA.
>In fact those arguments apply to other continents as well and IMO applying the
>2 point rule equally across the globe for all intra-continental Qs would seem
>to go a long way toward reducing by half the penalty for crossing over
>arbitrary continental boundaries (3-2 vs 3-1).
>
>Would this rule change be an affront to anyone's sense of good sportsmanship
>and fair play?
>
>73 Bob
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