ISU evaluation of questionable judging

Mathman · Jan 14, 2010

Ptichka said:
You see, the reason I could never believe this story...

Yeah, I agree. In fact, I deleted that part out of my post even before I saw your answer. Le Gougne's tale was a strange one from beginning to end. Later on she started accusing the Canadians of trying to pressure her to vote for Sale and Pelletiere months before the Olympics.

Anyway, my point is not so much that anonymois judging is evil, but that it does not address the problem that it was intended to.

snowflake · Jan 14, 2010

sk8rdad said:
If someone has an issue with a set of marks then you can refer to the judge by position on score sheet. The ISU knows which judge is which otherwise they would not be able to discipline.

So what happens if a skater/coach/anyone do this? Does the person get a written explanation or just a "thank you for your complaint"? I know that skaters can question their marks after a competition. But who do they meet up with? The actual judges, the tech caller or a committee…?

jenaj · Jan 14, 2010

sk8rdad said:
There is no reason for the general public to know the name of a judge other than to berate them or their federation publicly for cheating. .

I disagree with this. The main reason why judging should not be anonymous is accountability. When you sign your name to something, you stand behind it. Anonymous judges never have to explain themselves or own up to a mistake.
This is seen most evidently in PCS scoring, where there often seems to be no rhyme or reason to why one skater scores higher than another. In essence, it is the same place-holding system we had under 6.0, but with even greater opportunities for judges to decide in advance who they want to win and who they want to hold back..

Mathman · Jan 14, 2010

rallycairn said:
This seems like a small number of sanctions compared to competitions, but I really don't know the total number of judged events and the total number of judgements involved so it's hard to make much out of it.

I thought so, too. It seems to me that in the course of a season there must be hundreds of times where a judge simply disagrees with the majority, especially on such marks as Interpretation. After all, we are talking about a full competition, with maybe 30 skaters or more, with many programs being skated for the first time by not-so-famous skaters.

One factor is that the "corridor" of acceoptable marks is actually quite broad. Even so, I think there must have been many, many marks that the computer flagged as being outside the acceptable range, but when the judge was asked to justify the mark, a simple, "Oh look what a pretty ina bauer she did rigfht on the beat of the music. I gave her an extra point for that." -- will satisfy the oversight committee.

The judges have to be allowed to judge.

janetfan · Jan 14, 2010

jenaj said:
I disagree with this. The main reason why judging should not be anonymous is accountability. When you sign your name to something, you stand behind it. Anonymous judges never have to explain themselves or own up to a mistake.
This is seen most evidently in PCS scoring, where there often seems to be no rhyme or reason to why one skater scores higher than another. In essence, it is the same place-holding system we had under 6.0, but with even greater opportunities for judges to decide in advance who they want to win and who they want to hold back..

Of course the opportunities are greater. It was designed that way and when you throw in the tech panel it is easy to see how great the possibilties are for sponsors or interested federations to get a desired result.

I don't think Speedy and ISU leadership have shown enough integrity for me to ever trust their anonymous judging backed up with a tech panel they control.

Or maybe it just seems that way - because it is SECRET!

sk8rdad · Jan 14, 2010

Mathman said:
Let's look at a real-world example.

The President of the Russian skating federation, Valentin Piseev, is expected to appoint Alla Shekhovtsova to judge ice dancing in Vancouver. Ms. Shekhovtsova is Mr. Piseev's wife.

Do you think that anonymous judging at Vancouver will prevent Ms. Shekhovtsova from scoring Domnina and Shabalin above Virtue and Moir, or of reporting back to her husband that she had done so?

An extreme case, grabted. Still, I think the fallacy here lies in believing that national federation officers andf the judges they appoint are adversaries. In fact, they are colleagues and teammates.

But the even bigger fallacy here is that you or I could prove that D/S will be held up over V/M and that it is willfull cheating vs a difference of opinion on who is the better team. In the case of SLC while you argument holds true for the Russian involvement it doesn't necessarily for the French involvment where Ms Le Gougne claims to have been an unwilling participant.

Mathman · Jan 14, 2010

janetfan said:
I don't think Speedy and ISU leadership have shown enough integrity for me to ever trust their anonymous judging backed up with a tech panel they control.

That is really the catch 22. Indeed, one of the goals of the CoP was to take some of the power out of the hands of the member federations (who after all have as their main raison d'etre the garnering of as many medals as possible for their athletes) -- and proportionately to increase the degree of direct ISU control.

As Aragorn said about the different species of Orcs, "With these wicked folk it is difficult to tell when they are in league and when they are cheating one another." :laugh:

Mathman · Jan 14, 2010

sk8rdad said:
But the even bigger fallacy here is that you or I could prove that D/S will be held up over V/M and that it is willfull cheating vs a difference of opinion on who is the better team.

I do not see how that is relevant to the case in favor of anonymous judging.

How will anonymous judging prevent or discourage a judge from holding up D&S, if in fact he or she wishes to do so?

I just do not see anything positive about it. On the negative side, it makes the ISU look sneaky even when they are trying not to be. :eek:

hwell:

gkelly · Jan 14, 2010

Mathman said:
How will anonymous judging prevent or discourage a judge from holding up D&S, if in fact he or she wishes to do so?

I just do not see anything positive about it.

The question is, why would a judge want to hold up a skater or team with higher scores or placements than s/he thinks they deserve based on the skating?

Do judges prefer to manipulate results on their own initiative than to judge honestly? In that case anonymity is a problem. There's still plenty of room for judges to manipulate their numbers and anonymity makes it harder to identify which judges patterns of scores can be easily associated with their nationalities or other potential allegiances that can be tracked across competitions by matching scores to names/identities.

Or do most judges prefer to judge honestly but feel pressured by their federations to support their countries' skaters and to make deals with more powerful federations toward that end? In that case, anonymity protects them from that pressure and allows them to judge independently according to their conscience and expertise.

So the question is what you think the source of the motivation is for cheating.

On the negative side, it makes the ISU look sneaky even when they are trying not to be.hwell:

That's my biggest objection.

decker · Jan 14, 2010

sk8rdad said:
ITA. Just how often do you actually see an official in any sport disciplined publicly. It isn't the fans job to decide this it is the sports governing bodies job no matter what sport.

I don't know how often. But the Southeastern Conference (American football) just in October publicly suspended a football crew after they called multiple screwed up penalties in 2 different games. And the names of each member of a football officiating crew are announced at the beginning of the game anyway. Even without an investigation, it was no secret who blew the big calls in the Florida-Arkansas and Georgia-LSU games.

There's a kerfuffle in the NHL as we speak over a player charging that a referee makes calls for pure spite. The league decided otherwise, but the accused was publicly named.

Then there was the pro basketball ref who was making bum calls on games when he had bets laid. Can't recall his name, but he definitely was not allowed to remain anonymous.

Mathman · Jan 14, 2010

gkelly said:
...anonymity protects them from that pressure and allows them to judge independently.

That is the part I do not believe. I think it is dead easy for the federations to find out how their judges voted.

i love to skate · Jan 14, 2010

decker said:
Then there was the pro basketball ref who was making bum calls on games when he had bets laid. Can't recall his name, but he definitely was not allowed to remain anonymous.

Well criminal charges were brought against him. I'm sure if a skating judge had committed a crime, we would hear about it too

Mathman said:
That is the part I do not believe. I think it is dead easy for the federations to find out how their judges voted.

How would they find out? Do you not think that all the ISU really wants is a fair competition? Controversy does them no good so it would be unlikely that they would release this information to the the individual federations.

starrynight · Jan 14, 2010

Is the same evaluation/warning system applicable to tech panels?

Mathman · Jan 14, 2010

i love to skate said:
How would they find out? Do you not think that all the ISU really wants is a fair competition? Controversy does them no good so it would be unlikely that they would release this information to the the individual federations.

The people who sit on the committees that evaluate judges are themselves highly ranked members of their national federations. All federation chiefs have friends in high places.

Plus, seriously, sit the judge down and ask him/her which marks he gave. Some posters have made fun of this suggestion by saying, hey, you don't expect those lying coniving judges to tell their bosses the truth, do you.

But these judges are the friends and professional colleagues of the federation chiefs, and they are dependent on the federation brass to nominate them for future assignments. Then, too, judges talk to each other, to their friends. There is a referee's meeting after each event where the scores are discussed. Etc., etc., etc.

Heck, a lot of the time I can make a pretty good guess which judge is which, just by looking for the judge that gave a skater from a particular country the most inflated marks.(Granted it is harder to do that this year than in the past. They changed the reporting so that the judges are no longer listed in the same order for each skater. This makes it harder for me to figure it out, but I bet Piseev or Gailhauget or, for that matter, Thompson can if he really puts his mind to it.)

Bottom line: powerful skating insiders have access to all the information they want. Just not us.

James R · Jan 14, 2010

Mathman said:
The ISU has a procedure for spotting and evaluating possible instances of bias or incompetence on the part of judges. If an individual judges gives a score that is outside a certain (quite generous) "corridore" about the average of the other judges, then that errant score is flagged by the computer and reported as an "anomaly."

Maybe they should instead design a program to seek out and reward the fair scores, since those are the "anomalies." :rofl:

chloepoco · Jan 14, 2010

Do most people here really think there will be corruption in the judging for the Olympics? It seems that recently, much is being made of "questionable judging", and the judges are being accused of cheating, or being corrupt, or bribed, etc., and bigger, more influential federations are also being accused of unethical behavior, before an event has even begun. Perhaps people are putting a lot of credence into Phil Hersh's article as it seems this whole "questionable judging" thing has become bigger than ever since Hersh's article. What happened to "innocent until proven guilty".....or is that only an American concept? Just wondering....

sk8rdad · Jan 14, 2010

snowflake said:
So what happens if a skater/coach/anyone do this? Does the person get a written explanation or just a "thank you for your complaint"? I know that skaters can question their marks after a competition. But who do they meet up with? The actual judges, the tech caller or a committee…?

I have seen skaters discuss marks directly with both judges and tech specialists at competitions. I don't know what the protocol is at International events but I think that there is a avenue for a Federation to lodge a complaint with the ISU. Certianly at the National level judges are usually quite willing to discuss marks with a skater at least here in Canada.

i love to skate · Jan 14, 2010

chloepoco said:
Do most people here really think there will be corruption in the judging for the Olympics? It seems that recently, much is being made of "questionable judging", and the judges are being accused of cheating, or being corrupt, or bribed, etc., and bigger, more influential federations are also being accused of unethical behavior, before an event has even begun. Perhaps people are putting a lot of credence into Phil Hersh's article as it seems this whole "questionable judging" thing has become bigger than ever since Hersh's article. What happened to "innocent until proven guilty".....or is that only an American concept? Just wondering....

It seems that since Hersh has spun up some wild conspiracry (which even he said is pure speculation) everyone is paranoid over the Olympics. The events haven't even been skated yet for goodness sake!

Mathman · Jan 14, 2010

I agree. There is no reason to accuse, in advance, leaders of national federations of trying to put pressure on their judges to score a certain way.

Therefore there is no need for anonymous judging.

janetfan · Jan 14, 2010

Mathman said:
That is really the catch 22. Indeed, one of the goals of the CoP was to take some of the power out of the hands of the member federations (who after all have as their main raison d'etre the garnering of as many medals as possible for their athletes) -- and proportionately to increase the degree of direct ISU control.

As Aragorn said about the different species of Orcs, "With these wicked folk it is difficult to tell when they are in league and when they are cheating one another."

Two literary references in one post is fun. :clap:

ISU evaluation of questionable judging

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