[Dxspider-support] Self spotting - More

[Dirk Koopman]

Self spotting is a very emotive subject, but it is a subset of a bigger
problem.

On Mon, 2004-11-08 at 20:14 +0100, Robert Chalmas wrote:
> The final result is that maybe 20 people will appreciate your selfspot,
> while 5000 others will be disturbed by it, and the dozens of other
> self-spots received daily. This means a very poor efficiency.

Robert: don't take this personally, these are comments on the subject -
not an attack on your views particularly. I am using your words as a cue
for my thoughts.

DX Spotting is, by definition, extremely inefficient. Very, very (very)
few spots are of "universal" interest and, again by definition, if they
are: then the ops concerned wish that no-one had spotted them (pretty
soon :-). 

The fact is that (guessing here - with wet finger in air) less than 1%
of non-contest spots are acted upon by anybody. I reckon that 20 people
using a spot, at any frequency, is pretty damn good.

Periodically we have moans and groans about someone spotting, for
whatever reason that we don't agree with, X and Y. Whether the reason is
VHF (not WW), only 1000 miles away (not "real" DX), not accessible by
"my state" (and I don't mean just the US here) or whatever - it seems
that we all feel the need to have a bitch about something - sometime. 
 
This is fine, let it all hang out. But don't lose sight of the fact that
the data sent on this network is a microcosm of Ham Radio. Most of what
one hear is erm... "uninteresting" - only a very small bit of it
interests *you*. The exact same thing is true of what one sees on this
network. So please, treat it the same way: ignore stuff that you ain't
interested in...

Someone has taken the (admitted small) trouble of putting that spot onto
the network; to them, it is important, or at least mildly interesting,
or even just, maybe, they think: useful. Otherwise they would not have
bothered. Cut them some slack.

Now, having said all that, if you want to filter your feed, on your
node, to suit your requirements - that is *absolutely* fine by me. It's
a free world (at least for now), variety (again for now) is the spice of
life. But, at the same time, I *absolutely* defend the right of anybody
to send any "legal" spot - however trivial to "experts" on the network.
That spot should be distributed around the world so that nodes, and
their users, can choose whether to take any notice of it - themselves.

Also, don't lose sight of the fact that the constant flow of spots
provide a reasonably independent record of activity. This may, in the
future, be of incalculable benefit as a record, should we ever need some
proof of usage of the bands - all of them. I have over 5.5 million spots
going back to 1997 in my spot database.

> 
> Althought there were not a lot of alternatives to the DX command with
> the old AK1A software, DXSpider offers the excellent CHAT function.
> This makes possible to reach only people that share a common interest
> without disturbing the others. Well, the problem may be that not all
> users are aware of this command, but some will never try to use new
> solutions as long as the old one is working sooooooo easily.
> 

All this is true. The chat command is not used as much as it could be.
Having said that it is used more than you are probably aware (sh/chat
100 may be interesting). 

If you want people to use chat, then it is up to all of us to publicise
it and, maybe, give a lead. After all that is how the DX command became
so popular in the first place.

73 Dirk G1TLH