[CQ-Contest] Packet Cheerleaders

[Kenneth E. Harker]

On Tue, Nov 09, 2004 at 08:58:07AM -0700, Mike Fatchett wrote:

> Self spotting is a problem.  If your buddy wants to spend all contest
> chasing you around the bands and spotting you so be it.  I bet it doesn't
> happen that much.  

I believe it happens _a lot_ in the larger contest clubs.  Check out this 
example from 2002:

http://lists.contesting.com/archives//html/CQ-Contest/2002-03/msg00080.html

This happened more-or-less spontaneously - the operator of ZF2MM did not
specifically ask his contest club buddies to spot him while he was in 
the Cayman Islands, but some of his contest club buddies spotted him 30 
or more times while spotting basically nobody else in the contest - and 
collectively made sure that he was spotted every five minutes or so for 
long stretches of time.

Even though it wasn't planned in advance, was it fair to ZF2MM's competition
that ZF2MM had what amounted to an entire team of spotters promoting his 
contest effort all weekend long on the cluster network? 

Is there a lot of similar behavior going on at a not-quite-this-obvious 
level?  Sure.  Is there a lot of similar behavior going on where the 
spotters go to some trouble to hide their own identities?  I would bet on
that, too.

Cheerleaders on packet are a significant problem.


Perhaps one way to solve the problem, since a lot of it can be traced
to Club Competition, or misplaced pride in one's contest club, is to 
have contest sponsors identify the cheerleaders and ban them from entering
contest scores for some period of time after their infraction (12 months?  
Maybe with one warning?  Maybe publish the calls of those caught doing it?)  
This wouldn't stop all cheerleaders, but certainly for those motivated 
by improving their club's score, this would dissuade the behaviour.  
Thoughts?

-- 
Kenneth E. Harker WM5R
kenharker at kenharker.com
http://www.kenharker.com/