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Since I am banned from posting to the ARRL-LoTW online group, but knowing that ARRL CEO NA2AA religiously monitors the "My ARRL Voice" Group on Facebook, I posted this message there yesterday: "NA2AA: Since you banned me from the ARRL-LoTW online group for no reason other than my public opposition to your announced LoTW 2.0 plan - which New England Director AB1OC reported was subsequently cancelled because the ARRL couldn't afford it - I'll use this communications channel, which your ex-subordinates report that you carefully monitor, to inform you that the ARRL's DXCC system and LoTW are reporting inconsistent status for QSOs to which DXCC award credit has been granted. " Sure enough, Jon Bloom responded there today: "I don't believe this is generally true, but there may be particular records that aren't in sync. If you know of specific cases where LoTW users' DXCC records aren't displaying correctly, those should be reported to the LoTW help desk for action. Reporting that the system is "reporting inconsistent status" without any specific detail won't get you far." In response, I posted: "Well hello, Jon. For those who don't know Jon, he's ex-KE3Z - the developer who publicly released LoTW in 2003 with little testing and no user-oriented documentation. It crashed frequently with obscure error messages; its measured availability was less than 90%. Instead of focusing on improving reliability and usability, he instead added functionality: support for WPX and "Triple Play". By November 2012, LoTW ground to a halt, unable to make forward progress -- the result of a longstanding defect that a trivial stress test would have revealed years earlier. From your response to my post, Jon, it's clear that you've learned nothing since then. Are you aware that in 2013, the ARRL Board was persuaded to approve the acquisition of a second hardware instance so that modifications to LoTW could be tested before being publicly released? Your acknowledgement that "there may be particular records that aren't in sync" makes it clear that you failed to test your changes. Again. Not only has there been no improvement in LoTW's usability and functionality since 2018, you're now reversing the LoTW development team's hard-won gains in reliability - back when there was a competent LoTW development team. Were I able to post on the ARRL-LoTW group, I would of course have provided details and examples. You can get them from K1MU, who monitors the online group in which they were reported." Sorry to throw you in to the middle of this, Rick. ?Bj?rn, Stan, and Salvatore: I don't have contact information for Jon Bloom; you'll probably have to reach him via the LoTW Help Desk, as he requested: LoTW-help (at) arrl.org During my 50+ years in the computer hardware and software design business, there have only been two situations in which I was part of? a team that worked flat out to accomplish a difficult technical objective, only to have defeat be grasped from the jaws of victory. The first was documented by Tracy Kidder in "Soul of a New Machine"; the second was the ARRL-LoTW team's attempt to salvage LoTW from 2012-2018. I'll never forget either of them... ? ? ? 73, ? ? ? ? ? ?Dave, AA6YQ |
