[CQ-Contest] CQ WW Scoring System needs revision?

[W0MU Mike Fatchett]

I don't think this is a surprise but the USA map is a fairly decent 
representation of the population of the USA.

It makes sense that where there are more people you would have more hams 
or have hams have moved to the east coast to work more DX?

Is the EU map representative of the population as a whole there too?  It 
seems that central EU is far more heavily populated than western EU at 
least with hams who operate CQ WW.  Is there more population in these 
areas too?

The feeling I get from most people is that they are happy with the rules 
they way they are. Some of the more vocal people other than myself are 
East coasters who do quite well every contest so those folks might have 
a bit of bias.

I hope the main goal of contesting is to have fun.  Here in Colorado we 
had the slim chances to win when the propagation was perfect.  So going 
in we knew we pretty much had no chance to win it all.  Which says to me 
the premise of the contest and scoring is wrong.  With all things 
considered operator skill should be the main factor in winning not 
geographical location.

Mike W0MU

On 12/2/2013 10:03 PM, Rick Kiessig wrote:
> For those who may not have looked at the geographical disparities in CQWW,
> you may want to check out the maps at the links below:
>
> World:
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48950365/cqww-cw-world-2012.PNG
>
> Europe:
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48950365/cqww-cw-eu-2012.PNG
>
> US:
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48950365/cqww-cw-us-2012.PNG
>
> I generated these by geolocating all of the calls that submitted logs in
> CQWW CW 2012 (this year's aren't available yet). The dot sizes are
> proportional to the number of calls that resolved to the same latitude /
> longitude. I did the same thing for CQWW SSB, with similar results.
>
> If you live in the Eastern US, or in the middle of EU, or right next to a
> zone or continent boundary, then obviously you have a vested interest in
> keeping the existing scoring system.
>
> If the contest goals include attracting more DX to the competition and
> making scores more comparable globally, then I think it's obvious that
> scoring needs to be different.
>
> However, from much of the discussion I've seen so far, it seems like the
> opposite is true; perhaps the real goal is discouraging DX from the
> competition (as in having any real chance of winning), to have it be mainly
> a US/EU thing. That's certainly the vibe I'm getting.
>
> 73, Rick ZL2HAM / ZM1G
>
>
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