Funny, I didn't see anything in Mark's post that suggested this was about
trimming costs.
I think what QST is doing is what any responsible periodical does when faced
with shrinking newshole: find new ways to present material. I for one
embrace the idea of putting full results on the Web and devoting more space
to photographs, writeups and boxscores.
If we want to reach out to non-contesters in an age where it is becoming
less feasible to include full results, I think interesting copy, good photos
and winner's boxes are the way to go.
Sure, it may mean a hit to our egos when we don't see our callsign buried
amongst the thousand others, but isn't that a good incentive to upgrade
skills and station and make it into the winner's boxes.
I do believe that this will require expansion of the winners' boxes,
however. I don't feel that the Top 10 stations in New England in a DX
contest are necessarily the Top 10 stations in North America simply because
they made the most QSOs. There needs to be more delineation of geography
than simply by continents, given how disparately the gods of propagation
smile down upon various regions.
As for those who suggest we pull support for the ARRL over this, just how
ill-informed are you?
73, ve4xt
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>From J. Marcus Ziegler" <w6zzz@arrl.net Sat Jan 12 22:55:00 2002
From: J. Marcus Ziegler" <w6zzz@arrl.net (J. Marcus Ziegler)
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Contest Results on the Web
Message-ID: <002201c19bbc$2cceecc0$952d28ce@accesscom.com>
I would come out ahead if QST eliminated all the detailed contest results
and replaced it by a single web database containing all contest results for
the last "n" years that would allow me to search and sort and display data
such as:
- the results for a single contest
- the results for W6ZZZ in all contests, by type and by year or all years
- results by club for the club affiliated events like Sweepstakes
- trends by year
- etc.
It should also let you download the entire database and the sort/search
results in various computer readable formats (PDF, text, tab delimited,
spreadsheet, etc.).
ARRL is working on the "Logbook of the World". This could be called the
"Contests of the World".
QST could keep a little half-page write-up about each contest. It would draw
conclusions (participation is up/down, conditions were good/bad, new records
were set), have some pictures and list a few pithy soapbox comments.
I read my QST from cover to cover each month.
- Marc
- a new ham and contester
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