By working the dups without any comment you are encouraging people not
to bother to check whether they have you have already worked before
they call. This is lazy operating but is clearly done by a lot of
contesters, either those who don't use computer or paper dup sheets
(remember them?) or by trigger-happy S+Pers who call you first and
check the call in the computer second.
It is really dispiriting on the second day of a contest to have
periods when up to about 50% of the callers are dups. In this
situation if I say QSO B4 very few, if any, come back and say that I'm
not in their log. Most accept it, which tells me that they couldn't be
bothered to check if they had worked me, they just dumped their calls
in. If they had busted my call first time around or logged it on the
wrong band they would be likely to stay around and try again, but that
very rarely happens.
On CW I generallly send QSO B4 QRZ G4BUO TEST. It's even easier on
phone and takes very little time. If the caller really thinks he
hasn't worked me then he will probably call again and at that point
I'll work him. If he's using ME as his dup checker then he'll go away
and my QRZ may have attracted another caller who hopefully isn't a
dup.
What's really annoying is to go back to a partial call covered by QRM,
struggle to copy his exchange (in contests that have meaningful
exchanges) and then find when he corrects his call that he was in the
log all the time.
Dave G4BUO
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