[CQ-Contest] Reasons for ARRL's previously stated policy

[John Laney]

Several posts to the reflector have expressed a lack of understanding of 
the reasons for the (former?) ARRL policy on publication of logs and 
disallowance of DXCC credit for those stations who allow such 
publication.  It is my understanding that ARRL DXCC is concerned about 
the publication of logs because that allows someone who is not in the 
log and didn't make a contact to peruse the log and find a similar 
callsign.  Once he has complete QSO information for a similar callsign, 
he might be able to persuade the ham or QSL mananger to respond to a QSL 
and he might get a QSL for a contact made by someone else with a similar 
callsign when he even wasn't on the air.

Does that mean that QSL managers, myself included, should insist that 
the callsign be exactly correct in the log?  Many may already insist on 
that, but I think most of us have allowed for slight errors where it 
seemed clear that the callsign was miscopied or there was a key entry 
error on the callsign.  A rule of thumb seems to have been "off by one 
letter or number" and the wrong call not having been likely to have made 
the contact.

I am posting this only to inform those who are confused by a reason for 
the supposed ARRL rule because they don't remember or weren't on the 
reflector at the time of the earllier discussions.

I think it will be a shame if ARRL refuses to recognize for DXCC 
purposes contacts made by me and others from PJ4A, for example, because 
another entity entirely (not the operators) published the complete log 
of the contest.

73,

John, K4BAI.