> In the long run, categories
> will emerge that represent how people will like to compete and operate...
Well, those certainly include all of the traditional categories.
> What I am suggesting, is that the landmark decision of opening up the
> logs changes everything. We are no longer bound by the contest
> committee categories. We can make up our own categories and find like
> minded contesters to compete with.
I have promoted CWAC (Contests Within A Contest) for some time. Publication
of full logs and the score database fully enables any sort of CWAC. My
feeling is that this will increase participation because more participants
will be competing in more ways. This should also increase interest in the
traditional categories as more participants become more skilled and look to
compete with the Big Dogs that will still regard SOAB-HP to be the Big
Leagues of Contesting.
> The sport is not about records and
> rules, it is about the competition itself.
Nominally, but the quest to be the top call on the list is a mighty
incentive.
> [CQ WW's] forward thinking on log
> releases, combined with its log checking, can breathe even more life
> into contesting, perhaps not as we know it today.
Agreed. The work of the committee members to maintain the contest
infrastructure - definition of rules, collection of logs, log checking, rule
enforcement, results publication - validates the published data and enables
the CWAC to be meaningful.
Example - major-league baseball. The game is played with the same set of
consistent metrics recognized by MLB (Major League Baseball, Inc): wins &
losses, batting average, ERA, and a few more. Because the games are
carefully and thoroughly administered, a validated environment is created
for the blizzard of performance metrics that baseball fans love. Also
spawning Fantasy Baseball. Few are clamoring for MLB to create new
categories - they simply use the validated statistics generated from
on-field performance. Without MLB providing consistency and rule
enforcement, the statistics would have little meaning.
So anyway - while there may soon be funny-smelling new ways of contesting
and new ways to compete, they are all predicated on some organization (such
as CQ WW or ARRL) giving them structure and a sense of fair play between the
competitors.
73, Ward N0AX
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