ISU votes to abolish anonymous judging

StitchMonkey · Jun 8, 2016

While i agree this could lead to wars on forums and social media... well that already happens but it gets somewhat unfairly directed at the skaters. This change could shift the blame from the skater to the judges, which while pitchfork parties are never nice, i do kinda think the judges are better targets than the skaters.

Honestly I think we will find interesting patterns, and often have results that leave us scratching our heads. Hopefully we can also find patterns like "this judge really likes Tanos!" or "this judge really seems to hate lyrics" and have harmless fun with it in lieu of bitterness. I think we will see hometown judges being surprisingly low as often as surprisingly high.

Jammers · Jun 8, 2016

How does anyone think this will change anything? Anonymous judging only started after the 2002 Olympics. If anything corruption was way worse prior to anonymous judging knowing who the judges were never stopped them from cheating and it never will.

Shayuki · Jun 9, 2016

Jammers said:
How does anyone think this will change anything? Anonymous judging only started after the 2002 Olympics. If anything corruption was way worse prior to anonymous judging knowing who the judges were never stopped them from cheating and it never will.

Then they might be afraid of causing a shitstorm and if the shitstorm is bad enough they might get fired. Thereafter, the threat of that happening will at least make the silliness less prevalent.

Greatly looking forward to this, assuming they vote yes. At least then I'll be able to see which judge is judging incorrectly, flame them and point that specific judge out before competitions. Gives one something to do.

Jaana · Jun 9, 2016

noskates said:
Well maybe one good thing is we won't have to 'listen' to people blaming home-country-advantage if the majority of the judges are from other countries!!

Aren´t they always in international competitions? The home-country-advantage will still exist in the same way as earlier, IMO. Especially in competitions held in countries with strong = influental federation

Snow63 · Jun 9, 2016

Shayuki said:
Then they might be afraid of causing a shitstorm and if the shitstorm is bad enough they might get fired. Thereafter, the threat of that happening will at least make the silliness less prevalent.

Greatly looking forward to this, assuming they vote yes. At least then I'll be able to see which judge is judging incorrectly, flame them and point that specific judge out before competitions. Gives one something to do.

This happens now too. There's a procedure of banning ISU judges whose marks are not close enough to average. The judging is anonymous for skaters and spectators, but not for ISU.

CaroLiza_fan · Jun 9, 2016

NaVi said:
** Judge Panel Size
A large panel size is the best way to insulate the impact of cheating. I think the decision to reduce the panel from 12 to 9 for financial reasons was penny-wise and pound-foolish. It should be 12-15 for the GPF, Worlds, Olympics.

http://web.icenetwork.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090428&content_id=64320&vkey=ice_news
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISU_J...tions about Sochi... :rolleye: CaroLiza_fan

Mathman · Jun 9, 2016

gmyers said:
So what makes a judge more accountable if their scores are public? Possible suspensions for national bias?

Basically, yes. Removing anonymity certainly makes it easier to spot consistent patterns of national bias on the part of individual judges and incidences of collusion among several judges. In the 1980s the entire Russian federation was suspended for a year from sending judges to ISU events for egregious violations of fair judging standards. Didier Gailhaguet and Marie-Reine Le Gougne were suspended over the Salt Lake City scandal. Various toe-tappers and scalawags in ice dance judging were exposed.

Of course, it still is up to the ISU to take appropriate action. (The ISU knows who they are even when the public doesn't.)

This issue has nothing to do with whether 6.0 is more fair than CoP. In fact, the initial response to the Salt Lake City uproar was to rush in with the "Interim Scoring System" -- 6.0, but with anonymous judging. Poof -- the public may suspect, but they can't prove anything, heh heh.

FSGMT · Jun 9, 2016

Despite all the possible consequences I do find this very very encouraging for the whole sport, it is at last a step in the right direction.

And why complain about bloody battles about judges: if not that, what are we here for?

ice coverage · Jun 9, 2016

CaroLiza_fan said:
... Since the ISU know who the judges are at competitions, I wonder if, now that anonymous judging is being abolished, they will go back and release who gave each score in previous competitions.

And, if they did not do so off their own bat, I wonder if somebody could make them do it under a Freedom of Information request. ...

My two cents are that I would be very surprised if a Freedom of Information request could be made to the ISU.

At least in the U.S., FOIA applies only to information held by the federal government.

CaroLiza_fan · Jun 9, 2016

golden411icecoverage said:
My two cents are that I would be very surprised if a Freedom of Information request could be made to the ISU.

At least in the U.S., FOIA applies only to information held by the federal government.

I'm not sure of all the ins and outs, but over here in the UK it seems to be that you can request information from any organisation that has even the slightest of connection to the government. (Wikipedia description)

The BBC in particular are frequently asked to disclose things under the Freedom Of Information Act, particularly the cost of things they do. (Well, it is our money that they are spending, after all!)

But, that is just how it works in the UK. I don't know how freedom of information works under Swiss law. Or if the ISU would be eligible for it.

Nonetheless, it was an interesting thought.

CaroLiza_fan

yyyskate · Jun 9, 2016

WeakAnkles said:
Sochi was simply another in a very long line of examples. Mathman is right. It was implemented to guarantee that dealmaking and biased judging would be more difficult to uncover in order to assign accountability. And no judging system is ever going to be really respected unless there is a substantial measure of accountability.

Anonymous judging simply says, we don't care if you cheat but we do care if you get caught. Scandals are so... unpleasant.

I agree, but it got exposed to the highest level through Sochi. Sochi very possibly speed up the process. without Sochi, the very long line of examples will possibly be even longer (and buried from public). Therefore, it sorta is a legacy of Sochi.

gkelly · Jun 9, 2016

StitchMonkey said:
Honestly I think we will find interesting patterns, and often have results that leave us scratching our heads. Hopefully we can also find patterns like "this judge really likes Tanos!" or "this judge really seems to hate lyrics" and have harmless fun with it in lieu of bitterness. I think we will see hometown judges being surprisingly low as often as surprisingly high.

This is more interesting to me than looking for national bias. Of course, with 6.0 just about the only thing we knew about the judges that we could correlate with their marks was their nationality, so that was the source of the most speculation. It was all guesswork, though. And still will be to a large extent with IJS, because there's usually more than one criterion behind every score.

CaroLiza_fan said:
When discussions about judging inadequacies come up, my mind always starts thinking of how things work in ski jumping.

Thanks for the explanation.

Of course, part of the jumper's score is derived from the distance jumped. But, the other part is based on judges marking the style of the jump. And, when you ignore the numbers, it is pretty similar to the old system used in figure skating:

5 judges from 5 different countries.

judge's flag displayed next to the score they give.

marked out of 20.

highest and lowest marks discarded (so, 3 middle scores count).

Do judges give one overall "style" score for each jump?

Of course judging one jump at a time is very different from judging a whole program, so there's only so far one can compare.

Seeing the flags for each judge is similar to the way skating scores used to be shown pre-2003, but the actual scoring seems to be more comparable to the way individual elements are scored with GOE added to the base value. In 6.0 judging, unlike IJS or ski jump scoring, point totals were meaningless -- it was all about the ordinals.

Since the ISU know who the judges are at competitions, I wonder if, now that anonymous judging is being abolished, they will go back and release who gave each score in previous competitions.

Retrofitting the old protocols would be very resource intensive, especially for the recent ones in which the judges' columns are scrambled differently for each skater.

CaroLiza_fan · Jun 9, 2016

gkelly said:
Do judges give one overall "style" score for each jump?

Yes. It is not broken down into different things like steadiness of flight, whether you get a telemark landing, whether you're flapping your arms like a mad bird or anything like that. It is just an overall score.

And hence, it is subjective.

So, although it is only one set of scores, it is more like what I understand of the 6.0 system than it is of IJS. IJS was already in place when I started watching figure skating properly, so I don't know all the ins and outs of 6.0. For example, I don't understand the table matrices at all. Or what each line of judges scores is for (thank goodness they brought in proper labels for the IJS tables :bow:

).

gkelly said:
Retrofitting the old protocols would be very resource intensive, especially for the recent ones in which the judges' columns are scrambled differently for each skater.

Thank you gkelly!!! :bow:

Because that was exactly what I was working towards asking!!!

I knew that you would be the most likely person to know the answer, but I wasn't expecting you to be able to give it to me before I even asked the question!!! :bow:

I just assumed that each number was indeed the same judge the whole way through. But, I didn't know for sure, and wasn't concerned enough to ask before.

So, they are not now, but they used to be. Very interesting.

Thank you for enlightening me

CaroLiza_fan

jenaj · Jun 9, 2016

yyyskate said:
I agree, but it got exposed to the highest level through Sochi. Sochi very possibly speed up the process. without Sochi, the very long line of examples will possibly be even longer (and buried from public). Therefore, it sorta is a legacy of Sochi.

Then why did Korea vote to keep anonymous judging right after Sochi? People were calling for the end of anonymous judging before Sochi. The reasons go beyond possible cheating. Judges should be accountable for their scores regardless of whether they are cheating. Transparency is always better than secrecy.

drivingmissdaisy · Jun 9, 2016

Crossover said:
A legacy of Sochi.

The Sochi results wouldn't have changed. All of the wins were decisive.

drivingmissdaisy · Jun 9, 2016

jenaj said:
Then why did Korea vote to keep anonymous judging right after Sochi? People were calling for the end of anonymous judging before Sochi. The reasons go beyond possible cheating. Judges should be accountable for their scores regardless of whether they are cheating. Transparency is always better than secrecy.

The other problem is that it can make otherwise palatable wins seem controversial because the fans can't know how the judges scored an event. We can't even know how many judges preferred one skater over another.

mrrice · Jun 9, 2016

jenaj said:
Then why did Korea vote to keep anonymous judging right after Sochi? People were calling for the end of anonymous judging before Sochi. The reasons go beyond possible cheating. Judges should be accountable for their scores regardless of whether they are cheating. Transparency is always better than secrecy.

I agree with this comment. Most of you know that I judged off-ice Jazz Dance for many years and it was far more transparent than the ISU. First of all, we were introduced to the audience right before the first team took the floor. They announced our names, our "Caption's" meaning what we were Judging , and where we were from at every competition. I often judged "Musicality" which covers whether or not the moves fit the music. You'd be surprised at some of the things that choreographers will try.

I had never seen "Lyrical Hip Hop" before and I hardly had the words to explain how bad it was. Here's another thing that's different in the dance community. We have a judges critique session after the performances are completed and we are often asked to explain why we gave a certain number to a team. We try our best to be cordial but, you'd be surprised at some of the things I've been called by angry choreographers. Black Hitler and Stevie Wonder ( Meaning I couldn't see well enough to understand the choreography ) are my favorites.

Lila11 · Jun 9, 2016

yyyskate said:
I agree, but it got exposed to the highest level through Sochi. Sochi very possibly speed up the process. without Sochi, the very long line of examples will possibly be even longer (and buried from public). Therefore, it sorta is a legacy of Sochi.

I doubt it.
There were so many 'figure skating scandals' before Sochi.
(At the Vancouver games, judgeing controversy also existed)
ISU cannot handle 'the very long line of examples' any longer and they needs changes
Further, Yuna Kim and Korean federation didn't mention this at all.

mrrice · Jun 9, 2016

drivingmissdaisy said:
The other problem is that it can make otherwise palatable wins seem controversial because the fans can't know how the judges scored an event. We can't even know how many judges preferred one skater over another.

100% Correct!

Précision · Jun 9, 2016

NaVi said:
** Tech Panel

I'd also like to see literate tech calling. Too often I see ice dance couples who can't figure out how they lost a certain level. The awarding of step sequences often seems like voodoo. Tech panels should kind of document why they're making the calls they're making. This would also make figure skating more comprehensible.

Actually, during competition the Assistant Specialist and the Technical Controller should mark down the things that they didn't call. And I think Coaches can ask the Controller(via email of phone) after the Competition why certain levels were called.

ISU votes to abolish anonymous judging

StitchMonkey

Jammers

Shayuki

Jaana

Snow63

Pray one day we'll open our eyes.

CaroLiza_fan

EZETTIE LATUASV IVAKMHA

Mathman

FSGMT

ice coverage

avatar credit: @miyan5605

CaroLiza_fan

EZETTIE LATUASV IVAKMHA

yyyskate

gkelly

CaroLiza_fan

EZETTIE LATUASV IVAKMHA

jenaj

drivingmissdaisy

drivingmissdaisy

mrrice

Lila11

mrrice

Précision

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