[CQ-Contest] Encouraging contest participation

[Ron Notarius W3WN]

Pete,

I too was a beta-tester for LotW.

Is the security for it rather on the high side?  Yes.  I've heard many
people say that LotW is more secure than their on-line banking or credit
card services... which says a great deal more about the lack of security in
the financial sector than it does about the security level of LotW, but I
digress.

That being said...

Based on some of the private emails I've gotten, clearly I did not make my
point well. 

You originally suggested (among other things) that an aid to encouraging
contest participation, and by extension log submissions, is giving those
participants awards credits when the logs match up.  And I agree in
principle... it's just that we already have a system in place to do just
that, and (for those who choose to participate) all it takes is one extra
email.  

But nothing will be universally accepted in Amateur Radio, LotW being no
exception.  And for that matter... even though I don't advocate doing so,
the same thing could be done with eQSL.  

So the mechanism to do so is there.  Now, how do we get the casual
contesters to make use of it?

73

-----Original Message-----
From: Pete Smith [mailto:n4zr at contesting.com] 
Sent: Friday, June 19, 2009 9:16 AM
To: Ron Notarius W3WN; CQ-Contest at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Encouraging contest participation

Hi Ron - Every contest QSO I have made since 1994 is in LOTW.  I was 
a beta user of LOTW wat the beginning, and I am not reflexively 
anti-LOTW at all.  I have already apologized to one of the authors 
for my hyperbolic description of LOTW's security, but the fact 
remains that obtaining a certificate from LOTW is quite onerous for 
many people, and particularly for non-US hams.

As for your second point (how did it wind up first?), The logs I have 
submitted to LOTW contain QSO data with many, many  hams who are not 
themselves LOTW users (about 75 percent of my QSOs, in fact).  I 
don't think that constitutes forcing them to participate in it - I 
don't recall anyone objecting to being in the database, per se, just 
to the security requirements.  For that matter, it would be simple 
enough to make provision for people to ask that their logs not be 
included in the program, if they wished to do so.

But we're getting away from the real point - how do we provide 
incentives for non-contesters to get into contests?  You need to 
offer something they can't get in another way.  Many of us got into 
contesting through DXing, but the cost of collecting the QSLs has 
gotten way out of hand.  My thought was simply to take advantage of 
that fact, to give operating in contests further competitive appeal.

73, Pete N4ZR

  At 10:36 PM 6/18/2009, Ron Notarius W3WN wrote:
>I've been giving this some thought.
>
>There has been a demand, on and off for quite some time from some, for the
>ARRL to automatically give awards credit based on submitted contest logs
>that match up.
>
>And it wouldn't be hard to do.
>
>But two things keep surfacing:
>
>Second, there are many amateurs for many reasons who have declined to
>participate in Logbook of the World.  Many of these are active or
>semi-active contesters as well.  Why are we trying to force them (or more
>correctly, their contest logs) into a system that they have declined to
>participate in?
>
>But more importantly, First:  What's the big deal?
>
>OK, so you've emailed the contest sponsor your Cabrillo log.  IF you have
>chosen to participate in Logbook of the World... you do a quick encryption
>(takes all of what, 20 seconds?) and then email your encrypted Cabrillo log
>to the LotW server.  Total time:  A minute?
>
>Are we that jaded that we can't be bothered to submit two emails instead of
>one?  To save a minute or so?  Heck, we probably spend more time (as a
>group) griping about it, than it would actually take to do!
>
>Or does that make too much sense?
>
>73
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com
>[mailto:cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Pete Smith
>Sent: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 7:17 AM
>To: CQ-Contest at contesting.com
>Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Encouraging contest participation
>
>Dave's right about the potential value of encouraging more casual
>participants.  Just as happened to me 54 years ago, participation for
>purposes other than winning a certificate will result in some
>percentage catching the bug and becoming competitors.
>
>One thing that would be a big boost to participation by
>non-contesters would be to give award credit for contest QSOs that
>have been verified (cross-checked) by the log checkers.  Surely, it
>would be a fairly trivial addition to the log-checking software to
>have it generate a separate list of the verified QSOs in some pretty
>universal format, which the awards folks could use to grant credit
>toward DXCC, WAS, WPX, WAZ or whatever.  Talk about quick, low-cost
>gratification, obtainable nowhere else but through participation in
>contests!
>
>I can hear the screams now about diluting the "integrity" of the
>awards, but cheating scenarios involving collusion among participants
>in a contest to fabricate QSOs are pretty far fetched, and should be
>pretty easy to detect.  I suppose people might also point to the loss
>of revenue by ARRL, particularly for DXCC, but I truly wonder if the
>awards program is a profit center for them, or more a question of
>loss mitigation.
>
>73, Pete N4ZR
>
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