[UK-CONTEST] BERU UBN?

[Laurence Mason]

The points deduction system for errors was changed around 10 years ago. 
Before that you lost ALL points for a callsign error and a third of the 
points for every other error. So one digit wrong in a serial, report, 
locator, county/postcode district, postcode etc 1/3rd points lost, two 
digits wrong 2/3rd points etc.

It is open to debate whether an exchange error is less important than a 
callsign error - which was part of the rationale behind standardising 
the cost of an error as the whole QSO.

These days it should be fairly straight forward, as part of the 
adjudication process, for the checking software to log how many QSOs the 
sending station is involved in where the Rx station has an error - even 
broken down to callsign, serial, report etc. This could then be checked 
against the norm for the other entrants and certain stations quickly 
identified as statistical outliers where the balance of probability is 
that the problem was caused by sending rather than receiving - poor 
sending, too fast, garbled, forgotten /p, serial wrong etc. The points 
could then be deducted from the Tx end rather than the Rx end.

This does of course put even more work on the adjudicators / software 
writers (unless the feature is already there).

Laurence G4HTD



On 19/07/2011 10:40, Ian White GM3SEK wrote:
> Les Elliott wrote:
>> I think it is incredibly harsh to lose all Q points for one single
>> error in a number rx.
>>
>>
>> Surely there must be a less harsh way of penalising these misread
>> numbers? (say 1 point for each error ie 20% of the 5 QSO points
>> claimed).
>>
>> Just a personal opinion FWIW.
>>
>> 73 Cris
>> GM4FAM
>>
>>
>> That's the way it was before computer log checking.
>>
>> That's progress!
>>
> It's now very clear that the adjudication software needs to analyse all
> the UBNs identified in the entire contest, to look for any common
> factors on the _sending_ side.
>
> What happens next is up to the adjudicator, but if he decides that the
> source of the error was more probably on the sending side, any points
> lost through working those stations should certainly be restored.
>
> The argument that "it all averages out and affects everyone the same"
> has now gone way over its sell-by date.
>
>