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[CQ-Contest] Cheating problems and their solutions

To: <cq-contest@contesting.com>
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Cheating problems and their solutions
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:48:07 -0800
List-post: <mailto:cq-contest@contesting.com>
I've kept quiet on this subject for a while, but as someone who spent nearly 
seven years checking logs full time, I can contain myself no longer.

Scott Robbins suggests we require anyone in the top 5 of any category to 
submit a recording of all 48 hours...and a number of you have debated and 
decried the current situation for a while now.

My first question, as far as the recordings, is "Who's going to listen to 
all that?" Trust me, folks, the people judging the contest(s) have far more 
interesting and pressing things to do than to listen to recorded contests ad 
nauseum. No offense, Scott, just maybe not that practical.

While computers have taken the art of log checking a long way, it is still 
one of the most monotonous things you can ever be sentenced to do. Why do we 
need to take such extraordinary steps on the behalf of a few miscreants?

Perhaps we should just go all the way, and make anyone who has a top score 
agree to submit themselves to sodium pentathol and a polygraph test before 
their scores are validated. At least that would be entertaining.

Cheating in contesting is not a new thing. It's been going on since 
contesting began. I've seen a lot of it, including one deliberate effot 
which was nothing short of spectacular. Sadly, I cannot say who it was, but 
they know who they are.

Friends, this is a hobby, not an audit by the IRS. Is it not enough when 
someone cheats for us to know it, realize who these people are (and 
recognize them for what they are) and to move on? If enough of us recognize 
certain ops or calls as disreputable, and cease to work them, is that not a 
better policy than a public lynching in the town square, or shuffling them 
from contest suite to contest suite in Dayton so they can be flogged and 

Anyone who feels they have to cheat in a contest obviously has more problems 
than we're going to be able to solve in this forum. Let us just ostracize 
them, as is proper, and move on to the next contest.

Again, with malice towards none--

Warren, NF1J/6 

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