[CQ-Contest] Porposal for new contest sponsors

[Sylvan Katz]

>I agree with Jeff. What does the contest sponsors really do? They make the
>rules for the contest ( and are reluctant to change them if we suggest
>changes) and they report the results but only for the members or
subscribers
>at first.

>We have the means and opportunity to make contesting into what we want it
to
>be after all are not the contests really our contest and not theirs? They
>are not really interested in the contests, they see it as a means to get
>members or subscribers, and they can still do this by publishing articles
>about the contests and let us run them.

Very strong ideas - I like many of them!

I, like you, think that the contest community could evolve into a sort of
"open source contest scoring and analysis community". I also think that much
of what you are saying will come to pass fairly soon but probably not right
at the moment. It will take a bit of time for the momentum to build. You
might find that some of your suggestions are embedded - but not
transparently - in the proposal we recently placed before the ARRL BoD. Have
a look at the section on 3rd party activities and availability of contest
logs in http://www.designet.com/k1ir/Downloads/ContestProposal_071702.pdf

If contestant logs were made available to 3rd parties any number of
different rule sets can be tried and tested on them giving us an opportunity
to explore new rules without disturbing the 'classic' rules for the time
being. In fact, as a community all we really need to do is submit our logs
to the contest sponsor and to a central public repository. However, it would
be nice if we did not have to duplicate our efforts. Thus the proposal to
the ARRL BoD proposes that ARRL contest logs be made available to 3rd
parties provided certain privacy & security issues are respected. Also
contestants should be allowed to "opt out" of making their logs available to
3rd parties  Open source logs with open source scoring and analysis software
could open many unique doors for us to explore the future face of contesting
now!

I say - let the evolution begin! :-)

.. sylvan

Ô¿Ô¬
----------------
Sylvan Katz, VE5ZX
Saskatoon, SK
"A Novel Perspective of Amateur Radio Contesting" at
http://www.dynamicforesight.com/~ve5zx