[CQ-Contest] CQ Update

Mon Jul 23 04:50:31 PDT 2012

Simply: It's not a "reward". 

It's a matter of the contest sponsor taking the least painful route to get
as many properly formatted logs as possible into the system in order to do
as comprehensive and as accurate a log checking process as possible.

Most of the poorly formatted logs are not the winners. It's the hundreds of
small logs that are easier to manually analyze and just fix rather than
trying to get the entrant to fix them. 

While we could just discard all the improperly formatted logs, that would
result in a less accurate and less complete log checking process. Making the
log checking process more accurate is the objective - it is not to reward
the entrants who cannot manage to submit their log file properly. Most of
those who submitted a poorly formatted log don't even know they've done so
and they don't know that we've done the work to fix them. The other entrants
benefit by having their logs checked more accurately - not those who
submitted a poorly formatted log.

Yes, some logs are so badly constructed or lacking of complete information,
that we are forced to flag them as not usable and this is not what we want.
Usually, in these cases, we try to get the entrant to resubmit a complete
and proper log but many times they don't respond to requests or they report
that the computer has failed that the log was on etc.

73,

Bob W5OV
CQWW Committee Log File Fixer

-----Original Message-----
From: cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Rudy Bakalov
Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2012 3:28 PM
To: Don Field; CQ-Contest MailList
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] CQ Update

There is nothing strange about my point- entrants, not the organizers, are
responsible for ensuring that the log is good. Anything else is applying a
double standard to the contest rules. What is the argument for rewarding
participants who didn't even bother sending a clean log?

Rudy N2WQ

________________________________
 From: Don Field <don.field at gmail.com>
To: CQ-Contest MailList <cq-contest at contesting.com> 
Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2012 1:03 PM
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] CQ Update

Rudy

Very strange post.

"Illegal" - that's a strong term and quite incorrect. Who's law are we
invoking here? Personally, I wish more entrants would do a sanity check
before sending their log.

And many casual contesters still don't get their formatting, etc. right. Do
we penalise them and discourage them from ever entering again? I still get
jpegs, Word docs, all sorts. Even top contesters do silly things like
uploading the wrong log - different contest completely. You write as
someone who isn't on the receiving end and has no idea what happens!

Anyway, a timely reminder to all that the IOTA contest is this coming
weekend - I look forward to a record number of entries!

Don G3XTT
IOTA Contest Manager

On 22 July 2012 15:23, Rudy Bakalov <r_bakalov at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I really don't believe I am reading this in a public forum- it is illegal
> for participants to massage their logs after the contest, but it is OK,
and
> in fact it is a common practice, for the contest organizers to tweak the
> logs? Why? I see a double standard here. I am sorry, but a failure to
> produce a proper log should not be treated any differently than a failure
> to play by all other rules, copy whatever exchange is being sent, know
your
> own call sign and send it in a legible way, etc. It is precisely because
of
> technology, where everybody is using a logger, that there should be no
> excuses for producing a proper log.
>
>
> Rudy N2WQ
>
> P.S. Log analysis for behavior indicative of cheating does make sense.
>
>
> ________________________________
>  From: Ed Muns <w0yk at msn.com>
> To: cq-contest at contesting.com
> Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2012 10:29 PM
> Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] CQ Update
>
> The scoring technology is excellent.  3500 CQ WPX RTTY logs were
completely
> checked in about 15 minutes on an garden-variety PC.  85% of all QSOs
> cross-checked, calls busted that are off by two characters, all the scores
> listings and tables for the magazine article properly formatted, etc.
> However, hundreds of volunteer hours are put into manually correcting logs
> for Cabrillo errors, wrong band, wrong date/time, wrong sent callsign,
etc.
> Running further tests and analysis to detect and validate cheating takes
> many more volunteer hours.  Its this manual labor that takes a couple
> months
> of calendar time by unpaid volunteers to get the logs straightened out so
> the log check software can run with credible results.
>
> There's not much manual labor in submitting a contest log to the robot
> after
> the contest.  Five days is more than enough time.  Moreover, if
individuals
> would look over their log during those five days and correct the
formatting
> errors, the subsequent log checking time could decrease with less time
> spent
> by others cleaning up the logs.
>
> Ed W0YK
>
>
> Rudy, N2WQ, wrote:
> > Does this also mean that the results will be available and
> > published much quicker? Not much use of technology if it's
> > not applied to scoring as well.
>
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