judging system

[Aussie Willy]

I think there have been some very good responses in this thread.

I feel the system is very good in terms of what it strives to do in making a fair and equitable system for skaters.

Most of the complaints come with the human application of it and how judges use it. But I think people seem to forget humans are not machines. So judges can be open to subjective values, have a range of experiences that they bring to a judging panel and the potential to make mistakes.

The only thing that myself as a judge can do is learn from my experiences and mistakes and improve for the future.

For example, I tend to mark harder on PCS with regards to the music side of thing such as CH and IN than other judges. As someone suggested to me yesterday maybe I am going to be harder on that side of judging than what other judges are because I have a different set of values and knowledge I apply to my expectations. Does that make me a better judge? Or am I then being too hard on skaters because I have higher expectations of what I want to see. On the other side of that, I might have a different feeling for when a skater is using the music and give the skater credit for it because I see what they are trying to do.

For example a skater may have lovely interpretation and beautiful choreography. But if it is not on the music am I being reasonable to give a lower mark?

I don't think anyone who judges doesn't take it seriously and they really have a strong passion and commitment to the sport. But a good judge is constantly questioning if they have done the right or wrong thing, is willing to take feedback and learn all the time. I fyou stop learning you should probably stop judging.

[Susan M]

In her short in Germany, for her 2a, Yu-na received the following goe's: -1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, a range that hardly makes sense. How could that jump have been seen so differently by the judges?

I agree that kind of spread is indefensible, but this isn't the only time we've seen it, and I think the rulemakers are as much to blame as the judges. Still, if the jump had a negative problem of any kind, then +3 should be mathematically impossible.

I have always had real heartburn with the idea that an element can be flawed and still come out with a positive GOE. IMO a bad landing should not be negated by entry footwork or arms overhead or such. I think if an element has any real problem, then the rules should require judges to give no higher than -1 GOE. When you take the risk of making the element harder by adding some extra feature, then you should be rewarded when you succeed, but you should be penalized when you fail. This is the essence of sporting risk. Under the current system, skaters are rewarded for the risk even when they fail.

[gkelly]

I have always had real heartburn with the idea that an element can be flawed and still come out with a positive GOE.

IMO a bad landing should not be negated by entry footwork or arms overhead or such. I think if an element has any real problem, then the rules should require judges to give no higher than -1 GOE.


When you take the risk of making the element harder by adding some extra feature, then you should be rewarded when you succeed, but you should be penalized when you fail. This is the essence of sporting risk. Under the current system, skaters are rewarded for the risk even when they fail.

What do you consider "flawed" or "failed" in this context?

Some of the "flaws" in the "Errors for which final GOE is not restricted" column are par for the course at lower levels, only without any compensating factors that would be typical at senior level such as good speed on the approach or good height and distance in the air. Should the senior not be rewarded for the good aspects as well as being penalized for the bad ones?

Sometimes, under 6.0, commentators even claimed that a skater "nailed" a jump that had one of these weaknesses, just because they landed it on one foot and therefore it would count as a landed jump in the jump count. (Judges might not have been so generous.)

What about combination jumps, where the first jump might be excellent and the second (or third) one slightly flawed?

The mistakes that require negative GOE are downgrade (<<), fall, landing on two feet, stepping of landing, touch down with both hands, two three turns between jumps of a jump combo, and severe wrong edge takeoff. That's already in the rules. Also some errors that apply to short program requirements only.

The way the rules work, to get +2 a jump element would need to have four positive things about it, but to get a -1 reduction it would only have to have one, mild, weakness. So to start with +2 and have the error reduce it only to +1, there would need to be at least four strong aspects of the element. Should those all be canceled out by one flaw? Should a fast, high, jump with an unexpected entry that's well timed to the music with a scratchy landing be worth the same as a smaller slower jump from a slightly telegraphed jump completely unrelated to the music with a scratchy landing?

If both landings had reasonable flow, the first could get +2 and the second 0, so why not subtract the same -1 for weak landing? Why should the better jump get a reduction of -3 for the same minor error?

[dinakt]

Most of the complaints come with the human application of it and how judges use it. But I think people seem to forget humans are not machines. So judges can be open to subjective values, have a range of experiences that they bring to a judging panel and the potential to make mistakes. .

Absolutely. But while the technical side has strict guidelines how to apply it and training to go with it- does the artistic side? What kind of artistic training do judges get, to be able to judge PE, IN and CH? Because often-encountered argument that art is subjective does not convince me. I heard an NPR report about intuition recently- and the consensus was that it is a multitude of high- precision skills which help a person form an instant opinion without having to analyze it. I immediately thought of FSU. Musicians here tend to have if not a universal, then at least a similar "ball park" opinion about many skaters. A few times I encountered a request to precision- analyze a performance to justify my opinion. I've started writing a post. It can be done. I got verbose and bored and never finished. One can either analyze every jesture using professional lingo or apply intuition based on accumulated, trained knowledge. Now, if one does not have it and have to make an instant decision, what does one do? Answer in current system, usually, is equalize to SS, jump content and a skater's pecking order.

For example, I tend to mark harder on PCS with regards to the music side of thing such as CH and IN than other judges. As someone suggested to me yesterday maybe I am going to be harder on that side of judging than what other judges are because I have a different set of values and knowledge I apply to my expectations. Does that make me a better judge? Or am I then being too hard on skaters because I have higher expectations of what I want to see. On the other side of that, I might have a different feeling for when a skater is using the music and give the skater credit for it because I see what they are trying to do.

For example a skater may have lovely interpretation and beautiful choreography. But if it is not on the music am I being reasonable to give a lower mark?.

Certainly you are reasonable to give a lower mark. If music is to be a criteria, timing must be taken into consideration. Timing is the heartbeat of music, its most essential part that can be applied regardless of personal genre preference and thus most objective. Otherwise, turn off the sound, as there is little point. If applied correctly, it could be a wonderful thing.

So what would be good revisions of the PCS criteria to help judges do a better job of judging things that the sport has historically valued (and encourage skaters to do a better job of incorporating them in their programs)?

Beyond a page in a rulebook, what would be good training for judges who do not have an arts background to learn how to judge these things?

Would there be any value in training visual and performing artists, or art critics, to judge skating, assuming any would be willing to volunteer their time to learn the sport and then travel around judging?

Oy. I'll try.
Aspects of performance are: Musicality/timing ( music), Performance/ Interpretation ( theater; includes relationship to audience, connection to a character if there is one, projection- NOT musicality), Body Language/Aesthetics ( related to Dance. Extention, point, fluidity, finishing the movement, beautiful positions... apply whatever necessary, depending on style presented)
Choreo is its own can of worms, as in that PCS a choreographer is judged more than a skater. Perhaps, as long as we already have Transitions and SS judged separately, as well as the performance aspects, choreo should be substututed with Overall Impression/Execution. And here skaters can be punished for disruptive falls and stumbles- and anything that mars the performance but is not included in other PCS.

Yes, I think there is a point in having performing artists, directors/choreographers or art critics judge. Ideally. If it can be done without crazy complications. Of course, they would have to know about the sport and be able to distinguish a choctaw from a triple axel. It will not eliminate controversy ( ha!), but will give certain criteria more legitimacy.
Sorry to make you read all that.

[aftershocks]

All quite interesting, revealing and enlightening. And very worthy of an in-depth panel discussion, and even a week's conference on the subject. In particular, thanks for your input as someone who is a fs judge, Aussie Willy. Your comments shed a great deal of light on the hard-working, barely rewarded, never appreciated honest judges out there, who likely do make up the majority. But what if any do you think are the differences between being a fs judge on the regional/ national level in Australia vs big-time ISU events?

IMO, politics are always a factor in judging and even moreso on the international level. I'm sure the majority of judges are eager to do their best and always try to do their best fairly and above board. Maybe the influence of politics on judging has changed slightly from the good old bad old days, or it's been a slow process of change in how politics now affects the judging under the IJS system. But in fs, I doubt politics will ever not be a factor, particularly in the judging process. By it's very make-up of judges from different countries coming together to judge whose best in art and sport among skaters from different countries, fs is political. Art is subjective, and sport is quantifiable, but still not easily judged in figure skating.

From these interesting debate comments, I unfortunately glean the fact that the new system has a long way to go before it's ready for prime time. I get more of a sense of the judges being a bit confused about the rules and overwhelmed by all the minute details and aspects of a skater's performance that they have to judge quickly in real time. Even replays are not a great help to what they need to keep track of while a skater is performing. Is there any time for a judge to actually enjoy a skater's performance? Nah, but then many of the point-grabbing performances are more about following the rules and eking out spin and jump revolutions than they are about executing a cohesive, well-rounded beautifully choreographed and seamless program with great music, precise technique and unique interpretation that elevates both the art and the sport.

Some say the sport is more important, and that the art should be and actually is an afterthought these days. I say figure skating is not really figure skating as it was meant to be without a balanced complement of both art and sport that reaches out and takes hold of the audience's imagination and never lets go. In figure skating, that's what memories are made of, and in fact that is what pushes the sport forward. A quad full of height and brilliance can be awe-inspiring, but when landed in a program like the one Jeremy Abbott skated at 2012 Nationals, it becomes even more grand and meaningful, and at the same time meaningless in the face of Abbott's mastery of blade and movement over the ice. Some of the greatest programs in figure skating history do not contain many or any jumps, but the artists who executed those performances are still athletes of the highest order!

This sport/ art is misunderstood, inadequately judged, historically inadequately covered by the media, and currently led by inept (if well meaning) bureaucrats and power mongers who lack vision and imagination.

[Aussie Willy]

Absolutely. But while the technical side has strict guidelines how to apply it and training to go with it- does the artistic side? What kind of artistic training do judges get, to be able to judge PE, IN and CH?

I think one of the biggest problems is that as with many skaters, they take up skating because they love skating. For many they don't start skating because they love music and think that it is all about skating to music. So whilst you get some who are naturally musically gifted, you also get a lot that are not so. And that in my opinion flows down to judges and coaches. There are many who don't have a musical education as part of their development in skating.

As for education, the ISU Seminars are a first step and they always have some information on components, including the PE, CH and IN. Then there are the Component DVDs which I have found very helpful. But then I think also judges have to be self-motivated to want to learn and understand. I seriously find shows like SYTYCD are fantastic learning aids in these components.

[Aussie Willy]

But what if any do you think are the differences between being a fs judge on the regional/ national level in Australia vs big-time ISU events?

I really have no idea as I haven't judged internationally. But call me naive, to be perfectly honest I actually don't have much of an opinion on the topic. I am more concerned firstly with the day to day running of our sport in my state (being secretary of our state association), politics in the Australian skating scene (which are not judging related) and then judging on top of that.

Maybe if I ever became an international judge I could have a different perspective but at this point of time I don't.

[kwanfan1818]

My understanding was when they tried a split panel that way at Nebelhorn a number of years ago, the judges who were doing only GOEs were really bored.

The judges already had power wrested from them by the technical panels when they tried that experiment, and it was before the tech panels called edges and possible under-rotations the way they do now, so they started with more power than the judges have now. Asking existing judges to be on split panels, instead of ISU-trained specialists who used it as an opportunity to identify the ambiguities in the code, was like letting the wolf into the hen house. Does anyone really expect that the judges would have liked having even less power?

Any judge who was bored doing PCS only should have their credentials stripped. There's no excuse for not being engaged with how a program fits together and how a skater performs a program from end to end. Since when are the judges the driving factor? There are a lot of judges in training or those not assigned to international or top international assignments who, I would expect, would jump at the chance to judge TES or PCS. The judges aren't the factor: the Federations are, because the more the panels are split, the harder it is to politik.

I know there's an argument for greater numbers=greater accuracy, but I would rather see the judging panel split into a few jump specialists, a few spin and FW specialists, and a few PCS specialists -- sports like snowboarding have specialized split panels -- with the equivalent of a technical panel for PCS to determine the "levels" (difficulty, complexity, variety) of the choreography, transitions, and overall skating skills, and for Pairs and Dance, the elusive "Shared responsibility of purpose" (buried in CH), with the PCS judges giving a GOE for quality of how the skater interpreted the choreography, their form -- right now the only two references to form are knee action in SS and carriage in PE -- including leg line, toe point, extension, hands, shoulders, posture -- their unison (Pairs and Dance, currently also buried in PE), and musicality.

We're upset when there's a wide range of scores for an element, and it could be because of politiking, reputation, incompetence, or directly ignoring the criteria to impose the judges' own standards. However, everyone being in the corridor might be more precise, but that doesn't mean the end-product is accurate or has much to do with the written criteria and GOE charts.

Sometimes those discrepancies have to do with the judges' sightlines, especially with elements done in the Lutz corner, meant to obscure the vision of at least some of the judging panel and flaws like flutzes and crashy twist catches.

My question is where the judges set the starting value and then take deductions. How far North can they go before taking the deductions? There's a post that I can't find in which an FSUer argued, looked at jump criteria, that a high-scoring jump was badly flawed on two bullet points. Let's say for argument's sake that there was a skid/dodgy entrance, lots of power in the jump, quick rotation, loose legs, tilt in the air, terrific height, and a fine landing. Do they start adding +1 and +2 for rotation, power, height, great landing, let's say, starting with +6, and then deduct the -1 to -3 for the tilt, the skid entrance, the form, so that they could end up with +2 or +3, because the negatives were -3 or -4? Or do they max out at +3, no matter how many good qualities the jump has, and then start deducting from that?

I once took a take-home exam in which we were told that once we started writing, we had 1.5 or 1 hour, depending on the essay question on the hourglass model (once turned, you could write until it ran out). 1/3 of my classmates used the chess clock method instead: if they wrote for 10 minutes, they'd stop the clock, think some more, start the clock again, etc. They had a serious advantage, as would a skater who was being judged with a start value of +6 before deductions vs. a start value of +3 before deductions.

Absolutely. But while the technical side has strict guidelines how to apply it and training to go with it- does the artistic side? What kind of artistic training do judges get, to be able to judge PE, IN and CH? Because often-encountered argument that art is subjective does not convince me. I heard an NPR report about intuition recently- and the consensus was that it is a multitude of high- precision skills which help a person form an instant opinion without having to analyze it.

Plus juries come to consensus in music competitions, even though some members are more technique-oriented and others give more weight to interpretation or originality. I was ??? about the Met Council Auditions process, until I understood that the team was looking for potential, not the person who did the deepest interpretation of a given piece of music, or would be perfect for a smaller European house and different rep. They knew what they were looking for and could fine tune it, even if they didn't always agree on each singer.

A ballet, modern, or contemporary dance can look at a spin and see when there are sloppy transitions between positions, traveling, sloppy and poorly done positions, and slowing, for example, because it's exactly what they're looking for and what they're critiqued/they critique in their own genres, and they can spot a telegraph, weak transitions from the "tricks", and an awkward preparation from a mile.

You can get a panel of people who understand physical movement, whether they come from ballet, modern, contemporary, or tap, for example, but I don't see a universe of professionals who would rate Takahashi and Hanyu in the same stratosphere when considering quality of body movement, for example. There are too many commonalities in their training and expectation of coherence and control.

Of course, they would have to know about the sport and be able to distinguish a choctaw from a triple axel. It will not eliminate controversy ( ha!), but will give certain criteria more legitimacy.

If there was a panel that determined difficulty, they wouldn't have to know the technical details. They'd be judging the movement quality, form, musicality, and overall performance quality.

[Aussie Willy]

We just judge PCS for artistic events and it works quite well. Some competitions will use skating judges to just judge SS and TR and then dancers, theatre, music, etc to judge the other components. You get a very interesting disparity between the scores that are given by skating judges (usually around the normal competition range) and the others who will not hesitate to go into the 8s and 9s because they are just marking out of 10. It can some times give skaters who may not have the technical arsenal in terms of jumps a chance to really be recognised for what else they can bring to skating.

[Iceman]

gkelly


How can the referee step in immediately? The skater is still skating the program and the judges are still watching the next things that the skater is doing. (Also the referee doesn't see the judges' marks until after the end of the program.)


Sorry I wasn't clear. I meant after the program ended and the referee saw the scores, not while the skating was going on. That really would create a mess

[gkelly]

Any judge who was bored doing PCS only should have their credentials stripped.

I never heard that the judges who were doing PCS only were bored. It was the ones who were doing GOE only who were bored.

I know there's an argument for greater numbers=greater accuracy, but I would rather see the judging panel split into a few jump specialists, a few spin and FW specialists, and a few PCS specialists

How would this work below the world-class level?

The number of officials is a compromise between accuracy (more is better) and practicality (how many people can we afford to house and feed and pay travel expenses for). The most important events that have money coming in from sale of TV rights can afford a lot more than those that rely only on entry fees.

Initially, at the beginning of the IJS and even before that with the Interim System, the ISU thought it was a good idea to dilute the politics on the international panels by bringing in more judges and then randomly choosing some judges' scores not to count. That soon became cost prohibitive and they dropped that practice.

Worlds and Olympics always used to have 9-judge panels under 6.0 (plus an alternate), but Grand Prix events and other smaller or less-important internationals often only had 7. Regional or club competitions would sometimes use 5. Same under IJS except that it can also work with even numbers of judges.

The addition of the technical panels has already added considerably to the costs of running a competition, at any level.

Already most local competitions use only 5-6 judges on each panel, and when they're desperate for officials they might have to go down to 3-4 for some events. (And may make do without an assistant tech specialist on the tech panel, and without video and data operators if they're not using video replay)

With 6 judges, if you split the judging panel into three sets of task you could have only 2 judges in each section. But if you require four sections, or if there just aren't enough officials available to the local club, then you'd end up with only one judge making all the decisions on his/her own for the whole subset of skills assigned, OR you'd have some or all of the judges covering more than one subset anyway.

Judges at club competitions or even national competitions are likely to be less experienced than international judges, but they would have more authority than the more experienced judges at the big competitions that can afford larger panels. So by the time the judges got to the national and international level, even if we exclude all of the currently trained judges who are used to doing all GOEs and all PCS, they would likely have years of experience judging all or most of those skills at once. Then when they get to the higher judging levels, you give them less to do.

I'm not sure how to justify that logically, aside from the assumption that international judges want to judge politically so we need to devalue their expertise in order to dilute their power.

We're upset when there's a wide range of scores for an element, and it could be because of politiking, reputation, incompetence, or directly ignoring the criteria to impose the judges' own standards. However, everyone being in the corridor might be more precise, but that doesn't mean the end-product is accurate or has much to do with the written criteria and GOE charts.

Well, some observers approach the question determined to find an answer that proves there's a problem. So if judges disagree, that's always a problem, and if they always disagree, that's a problem. In that case, no solution will satisfy them and as soon as you make a change they will find problems with the new status quo.

If we want to be honest about it, we should first analyze exactly what about the current status quo is the system being designed wrong (good reasons to redesign), what's a case of most judges consistently implementing it wrong (need better training across the board), and what are isolated cases of individuals making occasional mistakes (need better training for those who make such mistakes frequently, and maybe failsafe devices to catch the mistakes before certifying them into the official scores).

My question is where the judges set the starting value and then take deductions. How far North can they go before taking the deductions? There's a post that I can't find in which an FSUer argued, looked at jump criteria, that a high-scoring jump was badly flawed on two bullet points. Let's say for argument's sake that there was a skid/dodgy entrance, lots of power in the jump, quick rotation, loose legs, tilt in the air, terrific height, and a fine landing. Do they start adding +1 and +2 for rotation, power, height, great landing, let's say, starting with +6, and then deduct the -1 to -3 for the tilt, the skid entrance, the form, so that they could end up with +2 or +3, because the negatives were -3 or -4? Or do they max out at +3, no matter how many good qualities the jump has, and then start deducting from that?

They max out at +3. And the guidelines for positive GOE say

It is at the discretion of each Judge to decide on the number of bullets for any upgrade, but general recommendations are as follows:

FOR +1: 2 bullets FOR +2: 4 bullets FOR +3: 6 bullets

So if they found 4 positive bullet points, they would generally be starting from +2, not +3. If they found 3, they'd start from either +1 or +2 -- most likely +1.

The rules don't say so, except in allowing discretion as mentioned in the bit I quoted above, but I would imagine that some judges might consider that if the description of a bullet point says "good" then if they think that aspect of the element was good they'll award one bullet point, but if they think that aspect of the element was OMG! phenomenal, they might count it twice.

They still can't start any higher than +3 for the most perfect element. And of course if it has any flaws that require reduction, it wasn't the most perfect so it would be extremely unlikely they would start from +3. Maybe, e.g., a huge, high, fast jump with excellent takeoff and landing edges, right on the music, with varied or especially beautiful air and landing positions would deserve +3 and then deserve a reduction for a telegraphed entry. Or forget the "excellent takeoff edge" and have the technical panel call "e" for unclear edge, not blatantly incorrect, that looked fine to the judge in real time. Or if a Lucinda Ruh or Alissa Czisny does a flying spin that's excellent as a spin but didn't quite achieve the necessary flying position in the air.

You can get a panel of people who understand physical movement, whether they come from ballet, modern, contemporary, or tap, for example, but I don't see a universe of professionals who would rate Takahashi and Hanyu in the same stratosphere when considering quality of body movement, for example. There are too many commonalities in their training and expectation of coherence and control.

I think it would be great to bring these outside experts and train them to judge these qualities in skating performances.

The practical problem would be the expense. Skating judges have spent years judging locally and traveling at their own or their federations' expense to get to the international level, at which point they continue to judge within their own countries on a regular basis and/or travel internationally at the ISU's expense, but they earn no take-home income from judging -- either they're independently wealthy, or they have jobs that they have to leave for up to a week whenever they get a judging assignment for a lengthy competition and/or in a distant location.

How many arts experts would be willing to give up several weeks of their income-generating work, even if it's mostly a long weekend here and there, to volunteer to judge figure skating?

[dinakt]

How many arts experts would be willing to give up several weeks of their income-generating work, even if it's mostly a long weekend here and there, to volunteer to judge figure skating?

Lots. A huge percentage of skating fans is in arts. It might be harder for people currently freelancing, but there are people teaching at University level; there are people who retired; etc.

[gkelly]

Well, if any of them also want to learn to judge the technical side of figure skating, don't wait for the ISU to change the system -- start trial judging!

If there is a separate PCS-only panel, should it be for top-flight senior internationals only? All senior and junior internationals, and national championships too? All IJS competitions anywhere at any level, unless a local club can't afford it and is allowed to compromise by having a handful of skating judges judge everything? I.e., how many "artistic judges" would be willing to spend a weekend in a rink maybe once a month, judging the artistic qualities of performances by kids who are still struggling with their skating skills and double jumps?

[l'etoile]

I agree that kind of spread is indefensible, but this isn't the only time we've seen it, and I think the rulemakers are as much to blame as the judges. Still, if the jump had a negative problem of any kind, then +3 should be mathematically impossible.

I have always had real heartburn with the idea that an element can be flawed and still come out with a positive GOE. IMO a bad landing should not be negated by entry footwork or arms overhead or such. I think if an element has any real problem, then the rules should require judges to give no higher than -1 GOE. When you take the risk of making the element harder by adding some extra feature, then you should be rewarded when you succeed, but you should be penalized when you fail. This is the essence of sporting risk. Under the current system, skaters are rewarded for the risk even when they fail.

There was a huge debate when ISU allowed to give 70% credit for under-rotated jumps which I think is a great rule for the sport. Don't know about ladies, but men's field has definitely evolved one level up and IMO it is also important to recognize the executed element as a whole, not as a hit-or-miss. That's why I think reduction system with GOE has its valuable grounds. Btw, the example OP and Iceman posted was clearly an anomaly, in no way that 2a with flawed landing should have gotten +3 GOE.

Well, if any of them also want to learn to judge the technical side of figure skating, don't wait for the ISU to change the system -- start trial judging!

If there is a separate PCS-only panel, should it be for top-flight senior internationals only? All senior and junior internationals, and national championships too? All IJS competitions anywhere at any level, unless a local club can't afford it and is allowed to compromise by having a handful of skating judges judge everything? I.e., how many "artistic judges" would be willing to spend a weekend in a rink maybe once a month, judging the artistic qualities of performances by kids who are still struggling with their skating skills and double jumps?

There's already a great thread for it that gkelly created days ago. I've been doing it with my own criteria of judging, it turned out to be quite interesting and exciting, and you also get a little hint of idea how judges's eyes have to work during the performances.

[peibeck]

Others much more knowledgeable than I (and with whom I agree) have suggested that there is no way a judge can judge all the things he is required to judge, especially in the short time he or she is given.

But judges have never really had unlimited time to judge, and with CoP (for GP and ISU championships, at least) get call back on video of elements a judge wants to review.

For the Vancouver Olympics, NBC had a great program to score-as-you-watch, just like the judges - including the elements and the PCS scores. Maybe I'm too much of an "armchair judge," but I didn't find it particularly difficult; in fact it helped me concentrate even more on some performances.

For junior and domestic competitions that don't use anonymous judging, the columns are in the same order as the list of judges on the cover sheet and stays the same for all skaters.

This is what irks me about the ISU and the whole" anonymous" judging thing. It, of course, is not really anonymous to the ISU. It is just there to protect the ISU's ass from the scrutiny of the press and the IOC (and, of course, FSU. ).

[Iceman]

Pelbeck, It is true judges never really had unlimited time to judge, but in the 6.0 era they certainly didn't have to come up with so many different scores for so many different things.

I would be interested to see a screen shot of the scoring form used in competitions.

[Triple Butz]

I love this system in the sp. In the LP/FD however, it fails me as a viewer. I wish they would judge in broader categories. Why not just have a box for jumps, spins, footwork, and moves in the field coupled with PCS as it is. It would be more subjective than it is now, but a lot less subjective than what we had in 6.0 (a single mark for all technical merit). Spin limits and Zayak guidelines could still apply. Would we have results we disagree with? Yes, but we have them now, and we've had them before. At least this way, the skaters would have more room to create programs that highlight their strengths, and a lot more freedom to choreograph creatively to the music.

[PairSk8Fan]

It appears the proper way to repair the judging issues is to take the approach of other professional sports like baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey and Americal football.

That is to use independently trained and certified judges, referees, etc. that are PAID PROFESSIONALS that answer ONLY TO THE UNION of which they belong, and not to any federations.

Professional, independent officials are what is needed. Until then, skating will not be viewed as a true sport by most of the viewing world.

[gkelly]

I would be interested to see a screen shot of the scoring form used in competitions.

See p. 3 here for a Canadian version of the touchscreen:
http://www.skateabnwtnun.com/LinkCli...language=en-US

I've seen a couple different layouts used in the US. There isn't a huge difference, though. I don't know about internationally.

I can't find a copy online of the forms that judges use to take notes (in the US is all I know). Perhaps they are copyrighted. More or less a paper version of the computer screens.

[Aussie Willy]

Here is the manual for the international IJS computers. It has screen shots of the data entry and judging screens.

http://www.isujudgingsystem.com/file...anual_V3.1.pdf