[CQ-Contest] Scourges of Contesting, Chapter One

[Kenneth E. Harker]

On Wed, May 28, 2003 at 11:01:10PM -0700, Rick Tavan wrote:
> Huh? So I guess baseball would be more popular if the players wore masks 
> and the announcer said things like "It's a sharp grounder to I Don't 
> Know ... underhanded toss to What, Out ... back to Who, DOUBLE PLAY!!"  
> Or, without relying on Abbott and Costello for cheap humor, how about 
> "Ball contact by Player A, fielded by Player B ... relayed to Players C 
> and D. Inning over." I don't know if my heart could stand the excitement.

Baseball and radiosport are not alike in many, many ways.
 
> Sure, real callsigns at WRTC would have allowed non-competitors to 
> influence the outcome. And in a contest designed to level the playing 
> field, that would have been a problem. 

It is a problem in any radio contest that intends to be a _competition_
as opposed to an "operating event" like Field Day or the Elecraft QSO Party.

>                                         But in more typical contest 
> situations, I ask "So what?" Sure, people do influence the outcomes of 
> their friends by spotting them, working them, sending attaboys and more, 
> even without scoreboards. 

All of these are undesirable effects on the fairness of the competition.  
Do we really want radiosport to become a popularity contest instead of a 
competitive sport?  Should the regrettable existence of non-competitive 
influences in the sport justify the introduction of even more non-competitive 
influences?

>                           And member recruitment influences the outcome 
> of club competitions. And voters influence the outcome of elections in 
> most jurisdictions.  Unfair advantages? What else is new? 

Again, do we really want radiosport to become a popularity contest instead 
of a competitive sport?

>                                                            We compete in 
> an inherently unfair sport and only the whiners care. 

That's a lovely argument.  Those who disagree with me are whiners.  Great.

Some outside influences on contest performance are impossible or very
difficult to control.  The most obvious is geographical location.  In some 
contests, stations in certain locations will always have an advantage over
others.  A great example of this is the ARRL International DX Contest.
Those in W/VE closest to the DX have an advantage.  There's not much 
that can be done about that.  But there are plenty of other contests where 
geographic advantage is less pronounced.  Take the ARRL 10 Meter Contest,
for example.  In the U.S., stations from every part of the country make
"top ten" finishes: http://www.wm5r.org/maps/2001arrl10.html.  Nobody in
the U.S. has a reason to feel that they can't make a Top Ten finish because 
of where they live.  Not every contest is as "inherently unfair" as
you think.  If your assumption is that making contests less fair for everyone
is OK because they are already fundamentally unfair to start out with, I 
disagree.

-- 
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Kenneth E. Harker      "Vox Clamantis in Deserto"      kharker at cs.utexas.edu
University of Texas at Austin                   Amateur Radio Callsign: WM5R
Department of the Computer Sciences          Central Texas DX & Contest Club
Taylor Hall TAY 2.124                         Maintainer of Linux on Laptops
Austin, TX 78712-1188 USA            http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/
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