I think a difference needs to be made about something that is actually subjective, because it depends on your taste, cultural and personal priming etc. and hence cannot be argued with in terms of better or worse, and an object of study which could be assessed in such terms in theory, but it's extremely difficult to decide in praxis. To give a very clear example of the second: in soccer it can be difficult to actually decide whether a ball has fully crossed the line. Even the hawk-eye sometimes is not fully decisive. Nonetheless, this is not a subjective question. I think sometimes people conflate these.
To me that looks like a very important point to first be made when talking about these questions.
I think there are more than two different levels of "subjective" with the examples you give more at the extremes.
1) There is an objective answer which could be precisely determined with the right technology or person-power, but it may not be cost effective to invest in the necessary resources.
Examples: Determining whether a ball has fully crossed a line, or whether a skating jump is fully rotated.
2) Determining the quality of a clearly defined move with clearly defined criteria. E.g., does a jump have "very good height and very good length" or "good take-off and landing" or does a spin have "good speed and/or acceleration during spin" or "good controlled, clear position(s) (inc. height and air/landing position in flying spin)"
For skating examples, definitions of "very good height and very good length" of a jump might vary based on the size and sex of the skater and also based on the type of jump (e.g., loop vs. toe loop). "Good speed" of a spin might depend on the size of the skater and also on the type of spin position.
I think everyone could agree on examples that are "adequate" or "outstanding," but different individuals might draw the line somewhere slightly different between adequate vs. good or between very good vs. outstanding. Or, for that matter, between the lower limit of "adequate" vs. the upper limit of "weak."
This type of subjectivity would primarily apply to GOEs.
Other judged sports where quality is assessed might have similar issues.
3) Similarly, the program component guidelines list the criteria in general, and then separately define the numerical scale between 0.25-0.75 "Extremely poor" and 9.00-9.75 "Excellent" and 10 "Outstanding."
If, e.g., 6.00-6.75 is "Above average" and 7.00-7.75 is "Good," different judges might mentally draw the line between 6.75 and 7.00 in different places in their own minds.
4) There are several criteria for each component. Judges might have somewhat different understandings of specific criteria based on their personal histories both from their own skating careers if applicable, including when and where they trained, in which discipline and to what level, and also any relevant off-ice knowledge they may bring to the process, about kinesiological principles, or various art forms and aesthetic principles, or cultural knowledge and expectations about the source of the chosen music.
And even if all judges had exactly the same understanding of what each criterion covers, different individuals might naturally pay more attention to some aspects of a given component than others.
5) Personal preference.
I don't think we can completely get rid of any of these sources of subjectivity. The component guidelines are written in such a way that personal preference is not supposed to play an official role scoring, but judges are human.
#4 is actually where I think we could have the most interesting conversations about the criteria as written and where/why different individuals might approach them differently.
(since this thread has become a semantic forward discussion)
