Figure skating is dying, and judges can't prop it up

[giselle23]

DWTS did not copy skatings numerical ranking system. It's scoring system is based on ballroom dance. You know... the kind of competition it is. And it's not even an ordinal system as they sometimes add the scores from different dances together.

No one said it is. What Christine Brennan said in her article--which is what started this thread--is that audiences love a system like this, where numbers are given out and the contestants ranked. And there's certain irony in the fact that skating ditched it at the same time it was being used to draw viewers in on reality TV. Of course, if figure skating doesn't care what audiences think, it doesn't matter.

[gkelly]

I haven't been able to find the list of presentation score bullet points for quite a while, but I seem to remember at least one that was related to skating skills, one that was used in the S/P vs. B/S analysis.

http://www.frogsonice.com/skateweb/a...-contest.shtml

To quote directly from ISU Rule 322:

In marking the presentation the following must be considered:

a) harmonious composition of the program as a whole and its conformity with the music chosen;

b) variation of speed;

c) utilization of the ice surface;

d) easy movement and sureness in time to the music;

e) carriage and style;

f) originality;

g) expression of the character of the music;

h) unison (pairs).

It used to be that "speed" by itself was part of the second mark in the short program, but that changed sometime in the mid-1990s.

I'll see if I can dig up some more old documents later, especially regarding the first mark.

[MacMadame]

That's your opinion, but I don't agree.

What a great technical analysis!

You know, your arguments agains CoP would would have a lot more credibility if you made arguments like these only in favor of Kostner getting higher PCS back then:

I agree: until a few years ago, Kostner did not control her speed consistently and she often skated stiffly. Now she had complete control over her speed, has much better choreography (as defined by the criteria, and moves elegantly with her full body, which gives her interpretation coherence and amplitude.

[giselle23]

In the Dortmund SP, Kostner and Sebestyen were wildly superior in technical elements than Kwan, with the exception of Sebestyen's lip, including the spins -- Kwan traveled a continent in one of the spins -- and their speed and power were second to none in that competition, and Kwan beat them in that segment.

Michelle was hosed in tech in that competition (for the time violation--one judge gave her a 5.1!) so I'm pretty sure Kostner, at least, had better tech scores. Michelle beat them on the second mark.

[MacMadame]

No one said it is. What Christine Brennan said in her article--which is what started this thread--is that audiences love a system like this, where numbers are given out and the contestants ranked. And there's certain irony in the fact that skating ditched it at the same time it was being used to draw viewers in on reality TV. Of course, if figure skating doesn't care what audiences think, it doesn't matter.

Yes, someone did say that. And DWTS does not use a "system like that" and it isn't the scoring system of DWTS that draws in viewers. It's the dancing and the fluff pieces. They could use any scoring system or none. Just give them feedback and announce who is in the bottom two and people would still watch.

[danceronice]

DWTS did not copy skatings numerical ranking system. It's scoring system is based on ballroom dance. You know... the kind of competition it is. And it's not even an ordinal system as they sometimes add the scores from different dances together.

No, it's not. Ballroom (except WDSF's current attempt to try and make their own IJS, in their continued quest to get into the Olympics) uses strict ordinals with no scores in final rounds, and elimination systems in the early rounds (you don't get scored in a first/quarter/semi, just an R on the judges' score sheet or no. Depending on how many they're recalling, a certain number of couples with the most Rs move on.) In the final, the couples are each given a placing 1-6, or 1-however there are (usually no more than 8.) In a multi-dance event, each dance is placed individually and then the placings for each dance are combined to
determine the final.

Since it gets brought up:

Here's a typical single-dance event score sheet with four couples and five judges (the numbers 11, 12, 13, 16, 18 are the judges--there's a master list showing which judge is which number; it's not anonymous. I removed the names of the competitors; my pro and I were 144).

Heat 339: L-A2 Bronze I Cha Cha Final

No. 11 12 13 16 18 1 1-2 1-3 1-4 Result

115 3 2 4 2 2 3 2
130 4 4 2 3 3 1 3(8) 4
144 2 1 3 4 4 1 2 3(6) 3
157 1 3 1 1 1 4 1

No scores other than our rank against each other--ties get broken on the right by how many 1sts, 1sts and 2nds, 1st-2nds-3rds, and 1-2-3-4th you have.

That is pure ordinal scoring. The odd number of judges USUALLY keeps there from being ties but once in a great while you have a tie where they go to rule 12 and STILL can't break it.

The reason that this works for dance is all of us are on the floor at once in a final. The judges are looking at everyone in direct comparison, so it's not necessarily "How ideal were those New Yorkers?" as "Whose of the four couples I'm looking at were the best right now?" Works great for dancing, where you can see everyone together, not so much for skating.

It does, however, eliminate the question of "what do you do with competitors from 7th on down..." They get cut before the final. If it's just fifteen couples, that's kind of annoying for the bottom 9, if it's 50 couples or more (Blackpool can have preliminary rounds with 200 couples) making a quarter final can be a huge accomplishment. Heck, if I were dancing at Blackpool I'd be over the moon to make ONE cut.

Off to do my part for growing USFS's membership....

[kwanfan1818]

I just came across the great ballet and classical music impresario Sol Hurok's quote, "If the public doesn’t want to come, you can’t stop them."

[danceronice]

I just came across the great ballet and classical music impresario Sol Hurok's quote, "If the public doesn’t want to come, you can’t stop them."

*clicks imaginary 'like' button*

The question is, why don't they want to come? I personally think the scoring system is part of it, but it's clearly not ALL of it.

[Mathman]

No, it's not. Ballroom (except WDSF's current attempt to try and make their own IJS, in their continued quest to get into the Olympics) uses strict ordinals with no scores in final rounds, and elimination systems in the early rounds (you don't get scored in a first/quarter/semi, just an R on the judges' score sheet or no. Depending on how many they're recalling, a certain number of couples with the most Rs move on.) In the final, the couples are each given a placing 1-6, or 1-however there are (usually no more than 8.) In a multi-dance event, each dance is placed individually and then the placings for each dance are combined to
determine the final.

Since it gets brought up:

Here's a typical single-dance event score sheet with four couples and five judges (the numbers 11, 12, 13, 16, 18 are the judges--there's a master list showing which judge is which number; it's not anonymous. I removed the names of the competitors; my pro and I were 144).

Heat 339: L-A2 Bronze I Cha Cha Final

No. 11 12 13 16 18 1 1-2 1-3 1-4 Result

115 3 2 4 2 2 3 2
130 4 4 2 3 3 1 3(8) 4
144 2 1 3 4 4 1 2 3(6) 3
157 1 3 1 1 1 4 1

No scores other than our rank against each other--ties get broken on the right by how many 1sts, 1sts and 2nds, 1st-2nds-3rds, and 1-2-3-4th you have.

That is pure ordinal scoring. The odd number of judges USUALLY keeps there from being ties but once in a great while you have a tie where they go to rule 12 and STILL can't break it.

The reason that this works for dance is all of us are on the floor at once in a final. The judges are looking at everyone in direct comparison, so it's not necessarily "How ideal were those New Yorkers?" as "Whose of the four couples I'm looking at were the best right now?" Works great for dancing, where you can see everyone together, not so much for skating.

It does, however, eliminate the question of "what do you do with competitors from 7th on down..." They get cut before the final. If it's just fifteen couples, that's kind of annoying for the bottom 9, if it's 50 couples or more (Blackpool can have preliminary rounds with 200 couples) making a quarter final can be a huge accomplishment. Heck, if I were dancing at Blackpool I'd be over the moon to make ONE cut.

Off to do my part for growing USFS's membership....

Thanks for that interesting breakdown.

Dancing with the stars, of course does something a little different. Only half the score is determined by the judges scores, the other half by the phone-in audience. U.S. figure skating tried it once, and Michelle won in a landslide even though by then she was so crippled up by hip injuries that she could hardly walk, let alone skate.

[Prancer]

Michelle was hosed in tech in that competition (for the time violation--one judge gave her a 5.1!) so I'm pretty sure Kostner, at least, had better tech scores. Michelle beat them on the second mark.

2004 Ladies' SP marks

[MacMadame]

No, it's not. Ballroom (except WDSF's current attempt to try and make their own IJS, in their continued quest to get into the Olympics) uses strict ordinals with no scores in final rounds, and elimination systems in the early rounds (you don't get scored in a first/quarter/semi, just an R on the judges' score sheet or no.

That's interesting because I've seen dance competitions that use raw scores. Maybe they weren't real because at least one of them was in the movie Silver Linings Playbook. But that was a different federation, I believe. There are a number of groups putting on dance competition (I have friends that do different kinds of dance) and they use different scoring systems.

Dancing with the stars, of course does something a little different. Only half the score is determined by the judges scores, the other half by the phone-in audience.

And it's the audience voting that brings in the audience. All these shows with audience voting have huge ratings.

To say DWTS is based on the old 6.0 system because judges give a mark when it's not marks based on a 6.0 system and they are added to an audience score in some mysterious way that is never revealed and so many sports and competitions also give out marks based on a 10.0 system and then claim that DWTS popularity is proof that 6.0 is better than IJS is completely illogical to me.

[Mathman]

^ OT, but actually one time DWTS did explain how the voting works on the air. Tom Bergeron whizzed through it as fast as announcers go through the list of side effects of the drugs they advertising (usually ending with blindness, insanity and death). I got the impression that there might be some sort of FCC rule that required it. (The judges' scores for each contestant are converted to a percentage of all scores given out, and the same with the votes from viewers. The two percentages are then added.)

Edited to add: Now that I think about it, maybe the lesson for figure skating is that popular shows like DWTS know that the audience has no interest in being educated about how the scoring system works.

[MacMadame]

^ OT, but actually one time DWTS did explain how the voting works on the air. Tom Bergeron whizzed through it as fast as announcers go through the list of side effects of the drugs they advertising (usually ending with blindness, insanity and death). I got the impression that there might be some sort of FCC rule that required it. (The judges' scores for each contestant are converted to a percentage of all scores given out, and the same with the votes from viewers. The two percentages are then added.)

Edited to add: Now that I think about it, maybe the lesson for figure skating is that popular shows like DWTS know that the audience has no interest in being educated about how the scoring system works.

I think the lesson is clearly that IJS causes blindness, insanity and death. Or maybe it's just this thread.

Honestly, I think there is no lesson for skating. DWTS is a silly reality tv show about dancing, not ice skating, that has a competition in there somewhere in a format that is nothing like a skating competition with a scoring system that is nothing like any scoring system ever used by skating. The lesson is that reality tv shows are popular, ballroom dancing is fun to watch and easy enough to learn to a level that's watchable, and Tom Bergeron is a good MC.

[kwanfan1818]

2004 Ladies' SP marks

Since it was 2004, the scores are listed in order from lowest to highest score for technical and from the lowest to highest score for presentation separately, and the columns don't represent scores by individual judges, i.e., the judge that gave her a 5.1 technical could have given her any of the presentation scores and, even if both scores were low, the ordinal would have been based on that judges' other scores.

From what I understand, the only way to find out ordinals, unless someone published it somewhere online, is from TV broadcasts, where tey were flashed momentarily.

[gkelly]

Since it was 2004, the scores are listed in order from lowest to highest score for technical and from the lowest to highest score for presentation separately, and the columns don't represent scores by individual judges, i.e., the judge that gave her a 5.1 technical could have given her any of the presentation scores and, even if both scores were low, the ordinal would have been based on that judges' other scores.

From what I understand, the only way to find out ordinals, unless someone published it somewhere online, is from TV broadcasts, where tey were flashed momentarily.

There were protocols published for 6.0 competitions showing the ordinals, but they weren't published online until the very last few years of 6.0 and in many cases even those pages have expired. So you'd have to work from the scores shown on TV broadcasts -- which could be misleading because if the broadcast skipped showing scores for one skater or even skipped showing that skater's performance at all, you'd only have partial information to work from. And yes, sometimes the ordinals for the 6th-place skater did mix up the medal standings.

Or you could find someone who had been in the arena and who purchased the official protocol or who wrote down all the scores announced after the skate and posted on the wall afterward.

Through the 2002 season, all those sources would give you scores and ordinals for each judge.

As you note, for international events in 2003 and 2004, the technical marks were all listed low to high and the presentation marks were all listed low to high, so you couldn't line up the two marks from the same judge let alone know which judge gave which marks. AND some of the judges' scores were randomly dropped by the sekret computer.

That was true for the scores as they were announced in the Kiss and Cry on TV and as they were published in the official protocols. No one could know what the actual ordinals were during those except for those with access to the computer decisions.

Just another reminder that anonymity and IJS are two totally separate issues that happened to get introduced about the same time.

[kwanfan1818]

In the arena, they were shown in a flash and then were gone too quickly for most people to record, but I do remember discussions in the FS about how Kwan won first place ordinals from Arakawa and then how Cohen won Kwan's ordinals and another from Arakawa. I had no idea that there were protocols to be purchased or that would have been my souvenir instead of a key chain.

[pp55]

I had no idea that there were protocols to be purchased or that would have been my souvenir instead of a key chain.

Yes, old days the protocols were printed and all competitors/officials got a copy.

You can find some old marks/protocols at "sport-reference.com" website. Example:
http://www.sports-reference.com/olym...ree-dance.html

[kwanfan1818]

Many thanks for the link!

[Minou]

http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/03/22/a...n-on-thin-ice/ Figure skating is not dying; nor is the Canada-Russia rivalry. There is no nation exempt from jingoism.

Anonymous judging, although well-intended, should die.

[giselle23]

Yes, someone did say that. And DWTS does not use a "system like that" and it isn't the scoring system of DWTS that draws in viewers. It's the dancing and the fluff pieces. They could use any scoring system or none. Just give them feedback and announce who is in the bottom two and people would still watch.

Who said it? No one. Here is exactly what Christine Brennan said:

"In response, they shelved the sport's immensely popular but flawed 6.0 scoring system for an anonymous points-based system that few truly understand to this day. Even though it has produced some fairer results, this was a huge marketing mistake. The 6.0 system was reality TV before there was reality TV. It was Dancing with the Stars before anyone ever heard of the show, with the flags of the judges' countries and their scores superimposed over the skater watching in the aptly named "Kiss and Cry" area. Every TV show on earth wanted what skating had, and skating gave it all away."

Her article is what started this thread. She doesn't say DWTS is based on figure skating or 6.0. You are reading way too much into what was intended just to be an interesting observation.