[CQ-Contest] Proposed new packet/assisted rule

[David Robbins K1TTT]

> Stations who get spotted one or more times during the contest shall
enter
> the Assisted category.
> Stations who wish to submit an entry in the Unassisted category shall
"Opt
> Out" of being spotted.
> The packet sysops shall maintain an "Opt Out" database of stations who

> wish
> to NOT be spotted. In order to enter as Unassisted, a station must
exist
> in
> the Opt Out database continuously for the entire contest period.
(Opting
> out
> can be done by sending a command to the packet system, or perhaps
sending
> an
> email to a robot connected to the master Opt Out database, which would
> presumably be replicated to all packet nodes as needed.)

sorry, not possible.  There are many different types of software and web
systems being used for the spotting network, and not all of them are
even internet connected.  It is impossible at this time to even create
such a list that could be used everywhere let alone distribute it to
every node and expect every sysop in the world to install it on their
systems every weekend.  And then it would be impossible to verify that
every node had it installed and that it worked... and even if it were
installed on nodes so that telnet and packet users didn't get the spots
there are now user programs that use the cluster backbone protocol that
do their own filtering on the raw backbone data that includes spots that
are filtered out for regular users, there is no way to verify that those
users also included the no-spot list in their filters.  And then don't
forget the various web based dx chat lists that could 'spot' someone,
the #cqdx irc channel that could 'spot' someone without it going over
the cluster network.  How about places that still may use voice
repeaters for spotting, or if I go on the local 2m gud buddy machine and
tell someone that a rare dx station that is on the list is on a
particular frequency, does that count as a spot and how would the
contest sponsors know about it to reclassify the station??




David Robbins K1TTT
e-mail: mailto:k1ttt at arrl.net
web: http://www.k1ttt.net
AR-Cluster node: 145.69MHz or telnet://dxc.k1ttt.net