Picking up on 1 or 2 points from the last 5 pages ...
The publication of results lists, points listings etc on the website happened around the year 2000, before that most of the information was never publicised in any form. But concerns about 'competitiveness' - sometimes involving alleged skullduggery towards the end of the season between riders or clubs vying for some championship or other - date back a lot further. However back in 1991 when no fewer than 5 riders all broke the previous points record, I remember these people were generally riding in the same events, often together, and being supportive of each other, I don't recall any 'competitive' feel back then, other than a strong drive to set new benchmarks. (I just got my kicks by hanging on their coat-tails, work patterns permitting.)
So I think competitiveness - whatever form it takes - is much more about the individual personalities involved, than anything else. And as such it need only exist in their own minds, and I don't see why anyone else would be bothered either way. It's just one small aspect of the very diverse activity which is audaxing.
In the mid-noughties there was again a lot of 'competitiveness' concern which I remember being discussed in committee - there is always the option to not publish some or all of the results stuff, but in fact all we did was to remove the points listing in points order, and replace it with an alphabetical listing. This had, I thought, a very noticeable effect and appeared to take the heat out of late season points-chasing. There was also a policy decision to put a 'random' delay into the recording of Permanents - I'm not so keen on this but it probably has also had its effect.
NB that the published results are a by-product of the recording process - they can be published or not, but the underlying recording (using the web db server) would still take place in exactly the same way. This is because it's an easy way to arrange collaboration between several workers at the same coalface, even including the Organisers who perhaps unwittingly play their part in the recording process by using the online start sheet generator. (Recording is a necessary process because without it, SR lists etc could not exist.)
Most riders seem to like the published results, but there is a small but significant minority who dislike them - I've even met 1 or 2 people who've stopped audaxing because they don't want their name appearing in these lists. Another very useful by-product of publishing the lists is that they get thoroughly error-checked by the people most able to do this - the riders themselves. There's a lot of typing (whoever does it) to generate these lists so errors do happen - but these days we can be confident that most of these are spotted and can easily be corrected. With the old non-published records we can be sure they are riddled with mistakes, and indeed I daresay that in the bad old quill-pen-and-ledger days some year-end points totals were just fabricated by someone who couldn't be bothered to do all the necessary bean-counting.
As for validation - I detect a trend towards turning up and doing the ride, but then declining to pass the brevet card on for validation. This may make some sort of statement in the rider's own mind, but unfortunately it is also, in a small way, cheating AUK.
AUK has a very stupid financial model whereby a significant income generator is the small validation fee attached to each and every card submitted for validation. (And also - even more so - any 'temp member' fees accruing from non-member finishers.) If the card is withheld, these fees are lost to AUK, and if everybody did it there would be a big black hole in the finances. As I say, its a stupid system (not least because no income is generated from DNFs) but I've never been able to persuade anyone on committee to even seriously consider more sensible alternatives.
