[CQ-Contest] 2 point rule

[Bob Kupps]

Great post Jack. I think most contesters would like to use the scores as a meaningful indicator of how their efforts and stations, in general and more or less, rank and compare with others in their class. There are many impressive stations and ops in NA but unfortunately ops in the rest of the world cannot use the final scores as a meaningful tool to compare their efforts with their NA competitors. And it's far more unfortunate for the NA ops who are deprived of that opportunity with all but themselves.
73 Bob HS0ZIA



On Friday, November 29, 2013 9:05 AM, Jack Haverty. <k3fiv at arrl.net> wrote:
 
IMHO, it's necessary to understand what a scoring system is intended to measure, before you can judge whether or not it is "fair", or even if it is accomplishing that purpose.

I used to think that scores measured primarily radio skills.  Some QSOs are harder to make than others, and require more skill, so they provide more points.   At the end of the competition, whoever had the most points was "best" at doing whatever the score was measuring - which was some kind of radio skill depending on the particular focus of the contest.

But in this forum I've learned that scoring had other purposes.  Perhaps it was to encourage more rare locations to be on the air.   Or encourage more people to compete.  Or ...?

It strikes me that any discussion of scoring should be based on what the score is intended to measure.   In many of today's contests, it seems to me that some of the things that are now being measured don't have much to do with radio skills.    For example, the ability to stay awake for 48 hours is just one such "skill" that seems to have a dominating effect on scores.   Or the ability to travel to a nearby location where the points flow more freely.

Similarly, as noted recently, there are lots of QSOs which are awarded 3 points but seem much easier to complete than other 2 or 1 point QSOs.  

So, what exactly is the scoring system supposed to be measuring?   My personal preference is that it should measure radio skills, and the person with the best score should be considered the best at use of such skills.   But there's many other possibilities.

73,

/Jack de K3FIV







On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 4:22 PM, Bob Kupps <n6bk at yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi and thanks for all the comments. 
>
>I am persuaded by the arguments in favor of retaining the 2 point rule for NA. In fact those arguments apply to other continents as well and IMO applying the 2 point rule equally across the globe for all intra-continental Qs would seem to go a long way toward reducing by half the penalty for crossing over arbitrary continental boundaries (3-2 vs 3-1).
>
>Would this rule change be an affront to anyone's sense of good sportsmanship and fair play?
>
>73 Bob
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