Another way of looking at it:
The idea has sometimes been floated to have a separate panel of judges evaluating program components only. Some fans have even suggested bringing in arts experts who may have no more technical skating knowledge than the casual fan, but more performing arts knowledge than the average judge, to score PE, CO, and IN. Their expertise is musical phrasing, visual composition, body line, etc., but they may not be able to tell a double from a triple axel, let alone a toe loop from a flip or a three turn from a rocker.
Suppose such a PCS-only judging panel existed. And suppose that all of these experts score Jim higher on components than Chuck. But Chuck wins anyway because of better technical content.
Does it make sense to say that these artistic/component judges ranked Chuck ahead of Jim, even if every single one of them thought Jim was more artistic and gave higher scores to Jim?
Wouldn't it make more sense to say that "the panel" or "the panels" (meaning tech panel plus tech judges if there's a separate group scoring GOEs and SS/TR, plus referee) ranked Chuck higher? But if asked how the artistic panel specifically ranked these two skaters, you'd have to say they scored Jim higher.
Of course real judges in the current officials setup know a lot more about what they're seeing in terms of technical content and are also responsible for scoring the technical quality. But they're still only responsible for a piece of the total score. So if we must talk about how individual judges "rank" skaters, we can really only talk about the scores they actually award.
The idea has sometimes been floated to have a separate panel of judges evaluating program components only. Some fans have even suggested bringing in arts experts who may have no more technical skating knowledge than the casual fan, but more performing arts knowledge than the average judge, to score PE, CO, and IN. Their expertise is musical phrasing, visual composition, body line, etc., but they may not be able to tell a double from a triple axel, let alone a toe loop from a flip or a three turn from a rocker.
Suppose such a PCS-only judging panel existed. And suppose that all of these experts score Jim higher on components than Chuck. But Chuck wins anyway because of better technical content.
Does it make sense to say that these artistic/component judges ranked Chuck ahead of Jim, even if every single one of them thought Jim was more artistic and gave higher scores to Jim?
Wouldn't it make more sense to say that "the panel" or "the panels" (meaning tech panel plus tech judges if there's a separate group scoring GOEs and SS/TR, plus referee) ranked Chuck higher? But if asked how the artistic panel specifically ranked these two skaters, you'd have to say they scored Jim higher.
Of course real judges in the current officials setup know a lot more about what they're seeing in terms of technical content and are also responsible for scoring the technical quality. But they're still only responsible for a piece of the total score. So if we must talk about how individual judges "rank" skaters, we can really only talk about the scores they actually award.