Where are the Positive Hams? And How to Tell? – Solutions Offered Part VII 3 - August - 2012
Posted by k9zw in Amateur Radio, K9ZW, K9ZW Just Rambled, The Positive Ham.trackback
Following on the questions posed “Where are the Positive Hams? And How to Tell? – Part I” here are my thoughts:
More Steps recognized at the Club/Community Level than just Three License Classes
We recognize a “Black Belt” as a acheivement through a system with other belts and classes, we see in scouts all sorts of merit badges that help lead to earned advancement in that organization, and for those who computer game the characters have major levels with nearly unmeasurable complexity in detailed acheivement/power/skill sorts of attributes.
Why can’t we do the same thing with our hobby, perhaps recognizing at the local level those who have “qualified” to run the club station, or those who have got PSK31 down pat? How about those who have built and used their project to make QSOs? Or recognition of those who have met the ARES/RACES training & drill goals? Or those who have activated an Island, a Museum Ship or a Lighthouse?
Look at how computer skills can earn you recognized accreditations – last year I did an online introduction to Programing “Ruby on Rails” and earned a nifty “eBadge” that while zero cost to the course provider was kind of a nice touch.
Keep track, recognize and honor incremental acheivements within the hobby.
….
So these are a few of my observations and thoughts – what are yours?
73
Steve
K9ZW
I had a great thought, make a StackExchange site!
Turns out that there has been one in process for two years and it was shut down last week for lack of interest. Dang.
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/1795/amateur-radio
Didn’t seem obvious how StackExchange is much different than other Q&A Forums?
Speaking of forums, the best seem to be ones who require either a call sign or full name for an ID.
73
Steve
K9ZW
StackExchange is not a forum. It is a crowd-sourced and crowd-moderated Q&A site. The past questions are available as an FAQ.
StackExchange is moderated and questions stick around, so you don’t get the same question asked over and over again. Off-topic or rambling posts are voted down and sometimes deleted.
You can easily follow just a few topics, like QRP, emcomm, SOTA, digital modes, etc. I contribute to StackOverflow, which must have hundreds of questions per day, but I mostly answer things about the Solr search engine. This tagging allows experts to efficiently contribute without wading through endless QRZ posts about whatever they talk about.
In general, web-based forums are really inefficient to read. I gave up on them a long time ago, even though for several years at HP I maintained the netnews software and coordinated the internal newsgroups.
This is a forum discussion:
http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?351363-Biggest-Signal-on-Band
This is Q&A:
http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/36821/antennas-and-ground-planes
Gottcha – thanks! Things like “Moderated” make a huge difference!!
73
Steve
K9ZW
[...] Link: “Where are the Positive Hams? And How to Tell? – Solutions Offered Part VII“ [...]