It seems to me there are two distinct possible reasons for more contest
categories and awards. The first is to provide more opportunities for fairly
serious contesters to WIN something. This may, of course, increase overall
activity by encouraging some of these folks to put in more time than they
otherwise would have. The other reason is to try to increase activity, so
that we "serious" contesters can make more contacts. I'm not sure the
categories and awards approach is really going to help at all here. The
great majority of our contacts always come from operators who just get on
for a few hours, no matter how long the contest is. Unless we make almost
as many categories as operators, most of these folks aren't going to win
anything. Besides, they are just in the contest to have fun making a few
contacts, and maybe pick up a few new countries/states, etc. If we want to
encourage more of these operators to get into contests, or to make more
contacts, we have to find other ways to make contesting more attractive to
them.
These are really two distinct issues, so perhaps our discussion should try
to separate them.
Scott K9MA
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