Do the judges get to see the program again on replay or did they mark the 4T based on seeing it once in r/t?
As far as I know the judges only see it live in real time -- the tech panel gets replay.
Judge #1's opinion is that the 4T deserved +2.
Judge #2's opinion is that the 4T deserved -1.
That is a pretty big difference and it is impossible that both judges are right. The CoP marking in this case is purely subjective, same as 6.0.
Yes, the tech panel's calls are much more objective. They're not judging quality, only identifying what is done. Sometimes the execution is borderline and they have to make a judgment call over whether to give credit for something or not, but they're not making value judgments.
The judges are making value judgments, and therefore their scores are more subjective. They may see several good aspects and several bad aspects of the same element. So then they have to make decisions about how to balance out all those different qualities to come up with one GOE.
Some judges will focus on some of the aspects and not notice others. A different judge may notice different aspects. This may be because of their habitual pet peeves and preferences, or because of the angle at which they saw the element, or because of a momentary lapse of attention, or because they specifically happened to be looking at the whole body or only at the blade at a crucial moment, etc. etc.
Or they may see exactly the same things but make different value judgments about how much to reward the good things and how much to penalize the bad.
Imagine the following element:
A skater performs difficult clockwise steps halfway around the rink right into a triple lutz with arms overhead, Midori Ito-like high wrapped free leg and Ito-like height in the jump, good speed on landing, some change of edge right before takeoff.
The tech panel awards an e call, which now applies to both "starting from wrong edge" (GOE must be negative) and "unclear edge at takeoff" (judge must reduce the GOE by -1 to -2 from what they would have given otherwise, but the GOE need not be negative).
Judge A thinks "That was a good jump except for the wrap and the edge change, which I could see in real time. I need to penalize both of them. -2"
Judge B thinks "Wow, those were really difficult steps and that was a great jump with an extra enhancement in the arm position in the air; too bad about the wrap otherwise I'd be thinking +3, but I guess I'll go with +2. Oh, the tech panel called an "e" on the takeoff edge. I didn't see a problem in real time, but I'll take off for that too. +1 final GOE."
So there you have a range of -2 to +1 for the same jump, depending what each judge saw and what their priorities are. Eliminate the e call from the panel but make judge A an especial stickler for lutz takeoffs who sees unclear edges even when the panel doesn't, or give her a phobia about leg wraps, and then -1 to +2 would be a possible GOE range for that element.
Neither of those judges would be
wrong in their assessments, but they disagree strongly because they have different priorities.
Because it is subjective and judges are human CoP scoring will always be inaccurate and full of mistakes.
Is there a better way :think:
I don't know. Maybe someday technology can allow precise scoring of the technical aspects of some elements so it wouldn't be necessary to rely on human eyesight. But meanwhile, we need to accept that there is never going to be exactly one correct answer to ranking whole performances, or even to scoring many individual elements, as long as human perception is involved. Each official does the best they can, and the consensus of the group will be more accurate overall than only one individual's perception. As the saying goes, in IJS as well as under 6.0, that's why we have X judges on the panel.
Which means that one individual is never in a position to declare that everyone else is wrong.
) I guess you are right.
