On Monday, August 10, 2015 at 2:21:59 PM UTC-7, wrote:
I'm not sure how we got from a discussion on the impact of FLARM stealth on soaring skills and leeching, on the one hand, and time-limited start gates on the other.

They are very related. The whole reason for stealth mode is to reduce the value of flarm for gaggling and leeching. So, that means people who want stealth think gaggling and leeching are a problem, and it's useful to put in rules changes that reduce the benefits of gaggling and leeching.

Multiple start gates, event timers, last start, 15 minute brackets, less (if that's possible) assigned tasks, etc. etc. etc. are all rules changes proposed to reduce gaggling and leeching. That's why this thread went there.

If gaggling and leeching is a problem so we need to impose stealth mode -- which has some costs, to safety, to situational awareness, and for many to the enjoyment of the contest (it's fun to know where your buddies are) -- then it seems logical to explore all these other approaches to stopping gaggling and leeching.

if nothing else, the benefits of flarm for gaggling and leeching would be much lower if one adopted other rules changes that reduced gaggling and leeching.

All the other rules changes also have costs, downsides, complexity and so forth, which is why we don't have them (sometimes, anymore). But if gaggling and leeching are problems bad enough to motivate imposing stealth mode, then they must be bad enough to motivate reconsidering the rest of the anti-gaggling and leeching changes. Or maybe if we reconsidered one of those, we'd put enough stop to gaggling and leeching that we wouldn't have to go through the bother and other costs of imposing stealth.

Not advocating a side here, just why the dicussion is going this way and encouraging that larger discussion.

And here I thought it was going to be a boring rules season...

John Cochrane