[CQ-Contest] Uniques not counting and emotion

[Robert Naumann]

Someone said:

If you can't prove  they busted the call, you can't take it away. Period.
It's just  wrong.

Then someone else said:

Amen to that.  You can't delete unique's because they sound  "suspicious"!! 
You need proof. If not, don't be surprised to fewer, and fewer  guys
contesting.....If I were the owner of a big gun station, looking at all of
the time and money invested it, and the contest log checkers began removing
QSO's from my log that I just sat in the chair for 44 or 46 ( or more) hours
to  produce, just because they don't show up in another's log, it would be
time for  me to hang it up. The louder you are, I'll bet the more unique's
you end up with, am I correct?
____________________


Please stop. The hand-wringing, the weeping and gnashing of teeth on the
Unique issue is so misplaced that it is now being considered for one of the
"silliest of the year" awards.

Prediction of the impending demise of contesting as we know it, resulting
from the consideration of Uniques, is totally unfounded.

Aside from the blatant (IMHO) cheating (or as weakly alleged - sabotage)
that was going on at WRTC, and the resulting removal of all uniques from
*all the WRTC competitor's logs for WRTC scoring only*, no one is removing
Uniques from anyone's logs in the IARU or any of the other major contests.

The WRTC example also proves how wrong the assertion is that their removal
*from logs that are not cheating* makes any difference. 

When they removed the uniques from all the WRTC logs, aside from those who
had excessive uniques, their scores didn't change much, and they all stayed
in the same relative ranking. Net: no difference except for the four that
had excessive quantities of uniques. Re-read K1ZZ's excellent summary of the
situation if you missed it here: http://www.wrtc2006.com/release59.html

Whether Uniques are removed or not makes no real difference because Uniques
are in insignificant percentage of QSOs in the logs of stations that do not
cheat.

The bottom line of this discussion is that if you are not cheating, you have
nothing to worry about.

Now, back to the heat wave, water use restrictions, and very poor
conditions.

73,

Bob W5OV