Handicap systems have a lot of problems, especially if part of the goal
of any potential rule change is to encourage more participation. Any
scoring system that says you need to participate for at least X number
of years before you have a chance of placing high in the rankings sounds
like a major disincentive to me. The same would hold for any scoring
system that discourages participation in different categories (high vs
low power, single band vs all band, etc) from year to year.
I do find the discussion on distance versus path to be interesting,
though, and I even tried to come up with a way to use WRTC-type score
normalization to reference everyone's scores to the highest score in
their geographical area (state/province/section/country/whatever) but I
wasn't clever enough to figure out how to translate that to a national
or world ranking. And even if I could, do we really want to normalize
out the random acts of nature that in some years create bad propagation
for one part of the country (or world) while leaving another part of the
country (or world) unscathed?
More and more, it seems to me that true USA national rankings of
operator/station competence are simply rationally unsupportable by
science or logic. They are convenient and have historical appeal, but
they don't seem to mean much beyond that. Regional rankings would seem
to warrant more emphasis than they currently get.
73,
Dave AB7E
On 7/1/2011 7:10 PM, Doug Smith wrote:
> Not that I really think the scoring system needs changing, but to toss out an
> outside-the-box thought...
>
> How about a scheme where the winner is the entrant whose score has seen the
> greatest improvement over the average of their own five previous entries?
>
> You'd have to limit eligibility to those who've submitted scores greater than
> some threshold -- don't want someone "gaming the system" by making one
> QSO a year for five years, and then making five QSOs and claiming a 500%
> improvement(grin!).
>
> This system would automatically calibrate for geographical variations, among
> other factors.
>
_______________________________________________
CQ-Contest mailing list
CQ-Contest@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
|