Self-Spotting in contests - more

[Neil Smith]

The little feedback I received from my earlier posting was somewhat 
inconclusive.  My original question was whether as a cluster sysop, I 
should take any action to prevent contest stations from spotting 
themselves (or being spotted by friends).

Steve KO0U/4 tells me that there are various policies on the different 
groups of clusters in the US East, but that on the majority the users are 
left to spot what they want without censorship.  In the UK, some sysops 
are very firmly against self-spotting and use SET/DXNOK or SET/BADDX as 
soon as the first self-spot arrives from a contester, but most take no 
action.

A number of folks said that if a they saw a self-spot, they made a 
deliberate decision to _avoid_ a contact with that station.

Peter ON6TT pointed out that the practice is a successful one for the 
contest station he operates at, resulting in additional points.  Peter 
also uses all other legal ways to solicit qsos by ham radio that are 
available, and suggested that in some quarters, there is a belief that in 
HF contests, only HF should be used to find and work stations.

The general feeling was that self-spotting was allowed by the rules 
because it is not forbidden, and therefore should be tolerated, but that 
it was somehow not quite "right".

How do other sysops feel about this?  What about operators at the big 
multi-multis?  Where should I draw the line?  Do I let everyone spot 
themselves once a minute?  How about the ANNOUNCE messages saying 
"DON'T WORK G9XXX, THEY ARE BEATING US, WE NEED THE POINTS MORE", or 
"WE STILL NEED THE DAKOTAS, ANYONE HEARING THEM PSE ASK THEM TO CALL US"

Should we rely on the good taste of the self-spotters to keep the number 
of spots and announces to a reasonable level?  We could soon end up with 
an add-on to CT that sends a self-spot every few minutes and on every QSY.
Now THERE's an idea!!

My feelings?  I'll let anyone do anything on my cluster node so long as 
it is legal, decent and doesn't impact too heavily on other users.  If my 
trunk links overload during a contest, then I get them running faster for 
the next one.  Is there any need for a rule change to encompass this use 
of packet?  What do you think?
Neil G4DBN sysop GB7YDX cluster, York, England