How do spotting networks specific to POTA and SOTA activities work? ("parks/summits on the air")
Are POTA and SOTA spotting networks a subset, a superset, or a completely different network compared to other CW and/or SSB spotting networks (as used for DX and/or contesting)?
How do POTA and SOTA spotting networks spotting networks know that some spotted signal represents a POTA or SOTA spot? Does an operator have to send some special message (other than CQ) to get spotted? Or...?
I don't know about POTA spots on pota.app, having not participated in POTA, but I presume that it's like SOTA spots on SOTAwatch. SOTA spots are on a completely different network than the DX spotting networks. There probably are no technical standards for providing or consuming data outside of the SOTAwatch website, except a back door for preauthorized summit activators to send in a spot or alert by text or email, because there is no great need for such a thing. Most people just use the web site to check for spots and alerts, or submit spots and alerts.
Because the network is separate, the filtering is provided by the users themselves. They know to not try sending DX spots via SOTAwatch, or look for such spots on SOTAwatch, because there would be no point to doing so. As far as I know, SOTAwatch doesn't work with contest logging software, by design.
In order to be spotted on SOTAwatch, an operator would need to be clearly trying to activate a summit.
Anyone can submit a spot for another operator on SOTAwatch, and spotting oneself is allowed also (unlike on DX spotting networks). Prearranged contacts aren't legal for DXCC or contest points, but they are fine for SOTA, and that's what the SOTAwatch alerts are all about. Alerts are for planned future activities, so that activators can notify chasers that they plan to activate a summit in the future when they presumably won't have internet access. Also, advance notice of activations serves to drum up interest, which leads to more chasers, which makes activating summits more enjoyable for the activators. The majority of alerts are from the operators who are planning to activate the summits, which makes sense. Submitting an alert for another operator is uncommon, but allowed.
Sotawatch operates with "alerts", i.e. activity announcements by activators. These are entered on the site in advance. The watch service then merely monitors and filters the DX cluster traffic.
I've been a fairly active POTA hunter, though not yet an activator, and so I use the POTA.app spots page. This updated in two general ways.
The first is by manual spots. A park activator can (and should) self-spot so that people can find them. Unlike many spotting networks, this is not frowned upon. Likewise, listeners are encouraged to spot/re-spot an activator station, as this keeps the listing current and can include additional information (for example, signal strength at a particular lister's QTH).
The other way spots can get listed - for CW - is if the activator has scheduled an activation -and- the RBN (Reverse Beacon Network) picks up their station transmitting "CQ POTA". There is a connection between the RBN and POTA.app, such that POTA.app picks up the spots at RBN and will put them on their own spots list if they match a scheduled park activation. A CW station can still be listed manually via a listener, also.
Hope that helps!
As of today, there is no word for spotting networks that are specifically oriented towards POTA. I haven't found one. This, however doesn't mean it does not exist. It may be private or hidden however, I have heard rumors that the POTA folks are looking at coming up with one "someday".
In the meantime, I can offer you a solution: hamalert.org where you can set up a filter to weed out POTA spots and send them to yourself either, email, web or even telnet. In my case, I set up a filter and connect to hamalert.com using CCUser v.3.0 beta. You can try others but be warned, they may not remove duplicates as well as CCUser does.
Hope this helps
