I think the existence of the Activator Uniques and Chaser Uniques honour rolls and awards programmes already addresses this issue, and has done for a long time.
If I may as a newcomer to the SOTA community. There needs to be additional points for difficulty. I have many 10 point mountain peaks, not summits in my area. Several of them require 10-15 miles hikes in just to set up base camp. Then a class 3-6 climb to the peak. These peaks are extremely more difficult than many of the 10 point peaks I am seeing accomplished 124 times in North Wales. I am not sure what the formula is but it seems there is an inequity in how peaks are awarded value.
My two cents.
And I am having a lot of fun with SOTA.
Brett
I’ll reply while the MT is asleep.
A difficulty-based scheme has severe problems. People have different abilities. There are different routes up a mountain (like the trail or the face on Half Dome). California has over 3500 summits to grade and Alaska has way more. Some of them have never been climbed, like the one in the artillery range at Fort Hunter Liggett (W6/SC-198). No, one does not get extra points for calling Range Control before you summit. And so on.
Luckily, SOTA is not a competition, but a collegial program(me) to encourage operators to get on top of mountains. Also, as you said, great fun.
wunder
PS: I’ve been to Lake Stevens, visited the HP division there eons ago when I was putting together the HP Internet. Lovely spot.
You find all the summits with the qualifying prominence, then you sort them on their absolute height, then you split them into bands so you end up with 10% as 10pts. But the splits are then decided based on how difficult in absolute terms the association is (remoteness, access, weather etc.) The aim is to try to get plenty of summits for all capabilities. We have seen many times when a new association is being built that the AM may propose that 50% of the summits are worth 8 or 10 points. This has to be fixed to something sensible as SOTA is not about getting a big score. You win by taking part and having fun not by being number 1.
The discussion here is not about difficulty based scoring but using the absolute activation count to decide if a summit is “easy” or “hard” for whatever definitions you use. In addition it’s possible to look at the activation count and the time since last activation to decide on the desirability factor of one summit over another. Actually trying to figure out a difficulty based scoring system is nigh on impossible especially as the database lists 100000+ summits. Who will work out the difficulty for all of them?
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Although Wunder and Andy have given the essential answer I will add a bit of detail. If we take GW/NW-001, Snowdon, as a popular ten point summit, there are at least nine named routes up that mountain for walkers, you can even get carried to the edge of the AZ in a steam train and find a flight of steps cut up to the summit. At the other end of the scale you can piece together a selection of rock climbs giving over a thousand feet of climbing at grades up to 5.12. Grade that for SOTA! Long walks are not unheard of over here, either - the longest round walk to a mainland summit is over 20 miles.
Brian
I walked over 250 miles to reach a summit in 2006. I should have received “Mountain Goat” for that alone, but all the rotten MT would let me have was 8 measly points 
Yes, that certainly highlights the issue with a difficulty based scoring system. I’ve often thought it would be an absolute whizz to hire a helicopter and bag maybe 20 to 30 major summits in a day, but that wouldn’t be SOTA would it? Just imagine the uproar it would cause…
Which kind of implies that others do that.
I’m not sure, in fact, that anyone really does. I suspect it’s little more than a less-than-pleasant urban myth.
In terrible weather conditions or with tight time constraints (ferry to meet etc.) or it’s getting dark and hence less safe to descend a summit, I believe “4 contacts and we’re off” to be absolutely acceptable and I think most chasers would agree.
No activator I know cuts short at 4 contacts when he or she can make more chasers happy. I don’t know of an activator who isn’t also a chaser and so can see the situation from both sides.
Ed.
I’ll not be drawn on that one Tom. It’s a matter of opinion based on experience.
i activated two summits today in VK3 in rather unpleasant conditions - the second summit had driving rain and very strong gusts of wind. Athough wet and uncomfortable I pushed on to work all those who wanted the summit in their log but I have to admit that I didn’t hang around for long once I had no response to my last couple off calls. If I was in a dangerously cold state, I would not like to, but I would have no qualms about shutting down with chasers still unanswered though - your own safety must come first!
Back to the topic of scoringbased on difficulty of access, I am afraid that is impractical. For example there is one local summit that I have occasional drive to access but other activators have a 15 km / 800m vertical ascent to get to it. Scoring it differently would be very difficult to enforce - despite the issues we have with scoring variations (i.e. two identical height hills 4 km apart, one worth 1 point and the other 4 points due to the hills being in two different associations), I think the current height based scoring system is proven largely to work.
Matt
VK1MA
You have lots of that Gerald, as do I. Interesting therefore that your experience leads you to the opposite conclusion as mine does me.
We had quite a few 4 QSO activations in GI last week, but not one was a “four and I’m off” situation. HF conditions were so poor that it was sometimes taking me the thick end of an hour to reach the requisite four contacts, so I wasn’t going to hang around another 20 minutes wondering if I could make a 5th!
Jimmy, on the other hand, was notorious for doing a further ten CQ calls after qualifying before he could be encouraged to pack up and move on! So it might look like we did some “four and I’m off” activations (to you), but nothing could be further from the truth.
Anyway, at least I can always go back and activate them again 
I’ll be hoping for a few more than four tonight anyway! (Also hoping that the thunder steers well clear).
Rest assured Tom, I have never experienced that type of operating as far as you and Jimmy are concerned. Indeed I wasn’t aware of you making just sufficient contacts to qualify the summit in GI as conditions were not good enough to monitor your activation from start to finish. Snippets at best, more’s the pity. It must have been very frustrating. Been there and I have that tee-shirt in my SOTA wardrobe. I try not to pack it on my outings! 
“You win by taking part and having fun not by being number 1.”
THAT’s it! … IMO
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Unfortunately HP has been replaced with a subdivision and small park.
I can surely understand the issues of having to grade each summit. Especially for a person to do so would obviously not work. Has the thought of a peer reviewed summit report been looked at. An activator would return and make a report of contacts. In addition to the points of the summit a checklist of possible bonuses would be provided. Possible bonus points would include distance to the summit, climbing grade, snow or no snow, etc. After submitting the report any member of the association could challenge or confirm the point value claimed of the summit within a determined time frame.
This type of system would get more diverse summits activated as activators would be challenged to gain those summits not obtained.
It isn’t a matter of just grading a summit, Brett, if it was that simple it would perhaps be doable. In the case that I quoted above, GW/NW-001, there are nine marked and named trails to the summit, plus several scrambling routes plus innumerable rock climbing routes, each one of which would need a different grade. This is normal for this country, a survey in 2010 showed that at least 111,000 people participated in mountaineering in the UK, leading to a multiplicity of routes up every mountain - and the database shows over 900 UK activators. Each claimed score could be picked over by hundreds of critics! Pity the poor MT member who would have to adjudicate!
The originators of the program chose to use summit height within an Association as a proxy for the difficulty - if some summits were easy for their height, others would be hard, and it would all even out. Thus the points banding, which has the virtues of being easy to understand and involves no judgement calls. Simple and uncontroversial! So what if a particular summit is unusually easy or difficult - it would be just as easy or difficult for every activator who climbed it! If an activator chooses to climb to a summit by an unusually difficult route he does so for his own pleasure, that is no reason to claim extra “Brownie Points”!
Anyway, it is fourteen years too late to change!
Brian
Re “4 and I’m off”. I’ve sometimes been grateful for 4 in the 60 or so minutes I’ve allowed myself on the summit. I’ve also had 4 failed activations (admittedly 1 because I forgot the radio 
) despite lots of calling and only base my activations on time not numbers. I class 20 QSOs as good (some people seem to be chaser magnets).
As for the suggested “popularity” scoring - I don’t think there is a perfect system. There are examples of high scoring hills that are easier than some low scoring hills. And certainly you can’t really compare different associations as like for like.
Perhaps the best measure is to measure the success of SOTA in getting people to go walking, play radio and enjoy their personal achievements. I think it works!
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[quote=“G6PJZ, post:38, topic:13313”]I’ve sometimes been grateful for 4[/quote]Aye. Getting three and being unable to raise the fourth is, perhaps, the most frustrating. I wonder how often it happens…
Spent two hours on a summit once for that. Luckily, it was a lovely California day.
wunder