Are you under the impression sponsors don't want results out sooner? That
there's some kind of conspiracy to delay the work involved?
Have you volunteered to assist with adjudication?
The economics of running a contest aren't fantastic. There are no entry fees
and sponsorships are generally restricted to plaques and awards, so most of the
work is by volunteers, from the contest directors to the folks who do
log-checking.
These people have jobs, wives, husbands, kids and lives. Automation may have
simplified much of the work, but it's still a lot of work, especially if
there's plenty of pressure to detect cheating.
One major contest sponsor is having trouble keeping the lights on, witness the
problems with delivery of a certain magazine. Another sponsor is well-funded,
but has much more on its plate than contests.
If it was easy to get results out quicker, don't you think sponsors would?
Publication schedules are set around the time it takes to compile results. It's
not that the time it takes to compile results is dependent on publication
schedules, especially since results once available are online before they are
in print.
73, kelly, ve4xt
Sent from my iPhone
> On Apr 4, 2017, at 13:50, Stu Phillips <stu@k6tu.net> wrote:
>
>
> I’m curious what folks think is an appropriate time to wait for contest
> results?
>
> The wait time is all over the map:
>
> - NAQP’s – preliminary results published in small number of weeks, definitive
> around 4 months or so
> - ARRL contests – seem still to be driven by the print schedule of QST and
> around 6 months
> - CQ Magazine contests (WW & WPX) – claimed results a couple of weeks,
> definitive seem about a year
> - State QSO Parties – no normal value – one to several months
> - Others – weeks to years
>
> I know from personal experience that the log gathering, normalization and
> checking process is typically NOT the issue. That claimed (!), it depends on
> how much effort the contest sponsor places on automating that process (some
> manual intervention is still required – no small task for a large contest
> like the WW or WPX) but 4 to 6 weeks with appropriate coordination of
> logistics shouldn’t be unrealistic.
>
> I appreciate that the decision and timing of results lies with the sponsor
> but in a world with real time access, a need to attract a new generation of
> contesters who have less tolerance for delayed gratification, it would seem
> we should be aiming for almost instant results (a point recently argued here
> by Ward N0AX).
>
> Delays and unforeseen issues happen – this is the real world.
>
> SO - what do you think is a reasonable time for issuing contest results?
>
> Stu K6TU
>
> PS: As the newly minted sponsor of the Makrothen RTTY Contest – PL259 (Pizza
> Lovers 259) is aiming for results within one month of the contest end.
> https://www.pl259.org/makrothen/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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