[CQ-Contest] Comments on CQWW Rules

[David Gilbert]

It's odd how some people try to turn every debate into an issue of 
instant gratification.  It's the same tactic used by others who 
generalize about politics, or generations, or gender, or religion, or 
whatever.  And yes, I'm aware of the irony inherent in my own 
generalization(s) here.

It seems to me that the CQWW contest sponsors might simply be trying to 
make the event more attractive to casual participants in order to 
generate more activity for EVERYONE, including those of us (myself 
included) who prefer to run a frequency 98% of the time.

I like analogies.  I tend to avoid events like concerts and movies where 
I have to wait in line an excessive amount of time because the venue 
wasn't designed to meet the demand.  I virtually boycott stores that 
understaff the checkout lane because they weren't willing to treat my 
wait time as a service issue.   I used to spend a lot of money to 
periodically upgrade my computer with faster CPU/RAM/GPU so that I 
wouldn't have to wait so long to run calculation-intensive applications 
like EXCEL, VOACAP, or video games (mine is now fast enough for anything 
I care to run).

The only people who don't get irritated by excessive and needless wait 
times in this life are those who have absolutely nothing better to do, 
or are already dead.  (oops, another generalization)

It's boring to sit on a frequency listening to a string of QSOs being 
made by other contesters who got the callsign from a spot or by DX'ers 
who aren't really in the contest and couldn't care less how long it 
takes to snag a rare one.  It's frustrating having to wait for the other 
guy to simply let everyone know who he is.  It's irritating knowing that 
the other guy is soliciting a contact from you while purposely impacting 
your rate in order to enhance his.  If it's boring, frustrating, 
irritating it isn't going to appeal to a casual contester ... those 
folks that the rest of us keep trying to entice into the game by telling 
them that it's fun and exciting. The great majority of contest 
participants are S&P'ers, and the greater the run rate the greater the 
percentage of them.  A run rate of 100 QSOs/hr means that 99% of the 
participants are S&P'ers! It seems almost elitist to think that the 
rules should cater to the guy who wants to just sit there and run at the 
expense of majority who call him.

And how we went from reducing wait time to everyone getting a trophy is 
totally beyond me.  See non sequitur ... 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_%28logic%29>

Dave   AB7E


On 6/24/2014 7:47 AM, W0MU Mike Fatchett wrote:
> The aim is gain two way contacts?    I thought it was to work as many 
> people as possible and as many mults.  Pileup control is done by 
> giving callsigns.  So in an effort to placate the I NEED IT NOW 
> society a rules change has been made to remove a viable strategy from 
> a run station so that S&P stations can get a call or verify a call 
> faster.
>
> The next rule change we need is that everyone gets a shiny trophy and 
> we have no winners and losers..................
>
>
> Mike W0MU
>
> On 6/23/2014 10:25 PM, Christian Schneider wrote:
>> AF6O wrote:
>> >Once you try to force a competitor to adopt a strategy to boost his 
>> competitors score it ceases to be a contest.
>>
>> With the aim of the contest being to gain as much TWO-WAY-contacts, 
>> the other half of a qso seems to be such an essential part(ner) of 
>> the action that the decision does not seem to be unwise. Oh, and it 
>> is simply fair to take care of that point. But YMMV
>> Chris DL8MBS