[CQ-Contest] Convergence and Change

[Stan Stockton]

Cheaters cheat.  Combining the categories will cause cheaters to cheat in another way that will be harder to detect - power.  

Competitors - Have fun when you work a contest and when you know you were cheated out of a victory and the winner did not get caught, look forward to another opportunity to compete who continued hope you will receive public recognition to go with what you know yourself.

Organizers -  Continue to do your very best to adjudicate the contests and use all the technological means you can to determine whether someone has cheated.  Prove that you can successfully disqualify the many entrants that are running excessive power before even considering creating a scenario where there are more power cheaters.  

Keep calm and carry on.

73... Stan, K5GO



> On May 15, 2016, at 7:33 AM, kr2q at optimum.net wrote:
> 
> I see two perspectives to the discussion about combining SO with SOA:
> 
> 1.  What do the entrants want?
> 2.  What is the contest sponsor capable of?
> 
> Randy's surveys have shown that (on a high level), EU wants them combined but USA doesn't.
> 
> EU has more entrants than the USA.  Should that be factored in?  Should one-man-one-vote count?
> 
> Most entrants have no idea what the contest sponsor is capable of.  Looking at the DQs might
> give an indication of which contests look/care.  Some contests, with a separation for these
> two categories, NEVER DQ ANYONE for unclaimed use of "assistance," to use the CQ terminology.
> 
> What should entrants read into that?  For those who are vocal about keeping the separation,
> what do you think about the "other" contests (not CQWW on Oct/Nov) that NEVER DQ for
> unclaimed assistance?  Is ignorance bliss?
> 
> For me, it is a matter of ethics on the part of the contest sponsors/log adjudicators.  If the
> tools available do not allow for detecting "unclaimed assistance," is it ethical for the sponsor
> to keep the categories separate, implying that "they can tell" and thereby implying a degree of
> confidence in the published results?
> 
> What is the expectation of the entrants in looking at results?  Does the entrant EXPECT that
> because the categories are separate, that the results are necessarily bullet proof?  How about
> "close enough?"  Something else?
> 
> Randy said, "It has also made it more difficult to police the line between [paraphrasing] SO vs SOA."
> 
> What exactly does that mean?  
> 
> Conjecture for Discussion:
> What if it means that subtle (smart?) use of assistance, entered as not SOA, cannot be proven?
> What if subtle use of assistance means that it can't even be found?
> 
> Do the entrants still want two distinct categories IF (say, for the top 10), such abuse could not
> actually be accurately adjudicated?  How would we, the entrants, react?  What is our expectation
> of the contest sponsor?
> 
> PROMPTING QUESTION
> Is it more important to maintain two categories for the sake of having them separate or is it more 
> important that the published scores PER CATEGORY mean something?
> 
> de Doug KR2Q
> 
> PS..if you want to know my opinion, I would like to see the categories remain separated, but only
> if the separation has meaning.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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