[CQ-Contest] ARRL to allow self-spotting in contests

[Sterling Mann]

I, for one, welcome our new insect...erm...contesting rules. This change is
good for the face of our hobby!

This might be the rule change to open the floodgates of a new paradigm of
contesting and a new generation of contesters. The ARRL is answering the
mail on getting ham radio into more peoples' eyeballs - that is through
content. The self-spotting rule is a barrier to that which makes streamers
have to obscure frequencies and operate under an ethical gray area if they
want to be competitive and not have to submit as a check-log because,
despite intent, more people may seek to work a streamer than anyone else
and that could be perceived as a solicitation of QSOs.

This also opens the floodgates to a new type of QRM that we know very well
in the esports/video gaming world - stream sniping. Popular operators will
certainly draw trolls (but honestly, we already see that today, so what's
the difference?). It'll also be interesting to see how self-spotting plays
into contesting strategy. Does a spot hold any weight on "this frequency is
in use!" argument when your run freq gets trampled? How much different
would a S&P's operator's score be if everyone self-spotted over the current
system?  Does search and pounce even make sense now that it's a little more
point-and-shoot...click-and-transmit :) Or will the band window look any
different at all

And remember, there is always a category that YOU can CHOOSE to compete in.
But if you choose to compete unlimited, multiop, or otherwise assisted,
then you might be in a new echelon. You might want to buy a webcam and
learn how to livestream and hold an audience (yes, people watch this
stuff!). You might want to self-spot (assuming you weren't already).

I think this rule change levels the playing field amongst those who are
truly top-10 competitive, fixes the RBN gap, eliminates self-spotting as a
source of cheating (which is already wildly rampant and basically invisible
without a lot of manual pattern matching), and most importantly, opens a
big door towards modernizing the hobby.

I don't think the ARRL/CAC/whomever conferred with the contesting community
(as far as you know) because they already knew the answer would
overwhelmingly be NO, and the alternatives (like a livestreamer category,
or ultra-Unlimited categories) are too little. I'm happy the ARRL is making
such a sea-change. I'm sure they will enjoy reading the comments on it (and
I hope they stick to their guns on this) but at the end of the day, they
need to bring more hams into the hobby, more contesters on the air, more
activity on the bands, and more members into the ARRL, and by promoting
higher scores, greater competition, and weaving this into the attention
economy of the internet through content creation, that goes a LONG way to
investing in the future at the expense of the status quo.

--Sterling N0SSC