Just to add to Doug's excellent discussion of uniques: In Randy's survey I
ticked "Against" on the question re uniques. But then I started to look
deeper into the issue and I am now a convert - uniques should be deleted
(but not penalized) in most contests and certainly in CQWW.
As an example, at 3B8MU in 2014 we had only 0.7% uniques out of 10000+ QSOs
and this was at a semi-rare location. Looking at those uniques I am sure
that quite a few, maybe the majority, were busted calls. I would not be
worried about losing those "uniques" because statistically deletion of
uniques would hit the average player equally - there would be no change in
overall placement.
It would be interesting to see a global analysis of the ratio of uniques to
busted calls. I suspect that those with a high number of uniques also have a
high number of busted calls.
Now there are contests where deletion of uniques might not be appropriate. I
could think of contests with small participation and say 160m contests where
station capability and location is so critical.
There are already contests where uniques are disallowed. In 2014 I did a
relaxed entry in the LZ DX Contest as 3B9HA. There are loads of stations
that don't participate in the LZ Contest but want to work 3B9 so it turned
out that the sponsors only counted 764 of my 1115 QSOs. Fine, I believe I
understand why they do it but the net effect is of course that they
discourage participation by DX stations so in 2015 I stayed away from that
contest while at 3B9.
But in the big contests like the CQ WW and CQ WPX and most other big
contests - yes, just delete the uniques.
73 Olof G0CKV
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