Sport and dance across many decades has pretty clearly defined it. Amplitude, explosiveness, timing, positioning, ballon, full rotation, flow - these are obviously good qualities to have. It's strange you feign ignorance on the subject when there are millions of gymnasts, dancers, athletes, and informed spectators who understand this already.
Just because certain bad rules or customs exist in figure skating at the given moment, that doesn't mean it's what the sport should be striving for. The laziness and narrow-mindedness of the scoring system and the officials does not define figure skating itself. It's merely one demented version of skating and sport that we are forced to deal with right now.
That is not true whatsoever. Yagudin's arms are still in an open position a 1/2 rotation into the jump and his free leg stretched behind. His legs don't totally pull in until a full rotation into the jump. And then his arms open up in the air FAR above the ice as he descends into a perfectly backwards landing.
Jumping huge is more difficult, more fun to do, and more exciting to watch. It needs to be worth more, or else the risk-reward of the sport is not being ascertained properly (not to mention the audience appeal). "Allowing for more consistency" does not make something better peak quality. If you hunch your back and flex your feet in dance or gymnastics it's going to make moves easier, and thus more consistent, but that doesn't mean it's good. The same goes for all the other qualities of jumps. Again, risk-reward. People jumping smaller and with less dynamics and cheated rotations will certainly increase consistency, but that doesn't mean it should be idealized. There needs to be a worthwhile separation in the points for doing all these things correctly, so the people who want to risk the better quality are being rewarded when they execute.
It's sad this is even a discussion that needs to be had. It used to simply be standard. All the top competitors strived for these qualities, because it was understood that's how you do it properly and that's what is going to make you able to win. We currently exist in a nightmare branch of reality, where so many of the great aspects of the sport, and general common sense, has been replaced with random rules on paper that don't even reflect the intent of why the rules were created in the first place. It's like taking a film or any great book or artwork, and giving a synopsis or superficial description, and then acting like that synopsis is the same thing as the artwork itself. Or something being mistranslated and the populace just going through life thinking the mistranslation is the real thing.
It's never been landed before, because the people in this sport for DECADES who attempted it or thought about it doing it, were trying to do it with a more proper technique, and thus found it to be far too difficult. If people in the past grew up trying to do lower quality jumps with current techniques, then they too could have achieved what current skaters are doing. There's nothing inherently more talented about the current skaters. Only a reframing of how things are being done.
Your eyes seem to have an issue. Here are actual screencaps, look at the skate:
That is 1/4+, clearly.
Like I said before though, it's more about how the body is turning into the jump rather than kicking through. He is tightly winding in earlier, whereas with the other guys they still have an open body position in the air 1/2 rotation into the jump. They are pushing the jump outward and "exploding" into more, whereas here it's more about just getting around the circle.
LOL, the modern technique of utilizing the toepick more to takeoff is not something that shows better quality. Clean edge takeoffs are more difficult. Malinin doesn't use speed as much on a takeoff, there's more of a slowdown with the blade on the takeoff, which speaks to the overall thing I've been talking about with how it's less explosive. Dynamics are something that needs to be part of assessing jumps.
Where can I watch?
