[CQ-Contest] Packet Cheerleaders

[Ron Notarius]

And THAT is the heart of the problem, IMHO.

There is no way to determine if the Packet Cheerleaders have been organized
in advance by the station(s) in question, or if they just decided to do it
on their own without the knowledge of the station(s).

Hypothetically:  Let's say my club puts together a team to send down to our
USVI outpost and activate NP2SH for an upcoming major contest.  I think we
can all agree that it should be wrong for the club to plan, in advance, to
have people back home to make sure that they constantly spot the NP2SH
station.  But what if one person back home works them, spots them, and then
mentions on the club repeater where they are... so a few other club members
can work them... and then those guys decide to "help" by spotting, and it
snowballs from there.

Should the hypothetical NP2SH station take the hit after the fact (up to and
including DQ) because some folks back home thought they were "helping?"  And
worse thought, let's say that NP2SH becomes aware of this, objects to it and
asks the gang back home to stop -- and they don't, for whatever reason.
What then?

The core problem is that ethics can not be enforced... that is, I can not
force you to be ethical (after all, you and I might well differ on what is
and isn't ethical behavior on some hair-splitting points).  You can write
the rules as much as possible to encourage ethical and legal behavior, but
there will always be those who choose to do as they please.

Packet Cheerleading should be discouraged, and I applaud K1TTT et al for
bringing to light some of the... well, if not unethical or questionable,
certainly odd or unusual operating behaviors.  But before we start assessing
penalities, let's be sure we understand the problem and make sure we apply
those penalities to the right station.

Just imagine... two M/M stations battling it out from the same region, tight
race, tight scores.  Wouldn't it be terrible if someones associated with M/M
1 decided to cheerlead M/M 2 just to try and get them DQ'd?  (You think that
couldn't happen?  The way some of us have a "win at any cost" mentality? )

73, ron wn3vaw

----- Original Message ----- 
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 15:17:08 +0100
From: Jan Erik Holm <sm2ekm at telia.com>
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Packet Cheerleaders
To: cq-contest <cq-contest at contesting.com>

Problem is, when is it random and when is it
not random.

73 SM2EKM