[CQ-Contest] Wrap up: signal report

[Al Lorona]

Thanks for all of your responses. 
 
Relatively few people feel as strongly about this as I do, which kind of surprises me. Also surprising: that more of the top tier contesters had apparently no opinion on the matter.
 
I don't mean to be an ass about this, I really don't. But I must respond to the following.
 
A number of folks are in favor of keeping the (meaningless) signal report -- not as a piece of useful information in and of itself, but as a 'signal that what is to follow is an important piece of information'. C'mon. After thousands and thousands of contest exchanges, you don't know the format of the exchange? I don't buy that a contester needs a '5NN' to serve that function. Many other contests do not need such an 'attention' signal.
 
As a side note, years ago on this reflector there was considerable discussion about using such a practice on phone. I believe I was one of the people that admitted using "Thank you, please copy..." or some such 'attention' before sending my exchange and I recall being publicly excoriated in this forum for being so blatantly inefficient, for slowing down your rate, etc., etc. It is interesting that the same 'attention' argument does not hold on phone. I wonder why that is.
 
A number of folks suggested that I send a real signal report. At first I thought this advice was being given sarcastically but now I'm not sure. An honest question: if, in the next contest, I send realistic signal reports, are you going to be okay with that? Consider this fair warning.
 
All in all, these seemed to me to be weak arguments that mask some hidden reason which perhaps is along the lines of, "It's always been that way, so let's not change it." Hey, if that's the reason, that's the reason, but we all seem to be in denial, as nobody simply came out and said it. I don't the know the history behind this thing... perhaps the signal report has *never* been taken seriously in the history of contesting.
 
We contesters are so fanatically efficient in every other aspect leading up to t minus zero, in the chair and ready to go, and then screw it all up with the meaningless, dehumanizing nonsense that is 5NN. Amazing.
 
W6LX said that.