[CQ-Contest] Packet Cheerleaders

[kd4d at comcast.net]

Hi Ken:

Is there a SINGLE contest with a rule against "Cheerleading" spots?
I can't think of one offhand.  Also, a lot of the spotting may be
being done by casual participants who don't care much about
the competition.

73,

Mark


> 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/
> 
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