Proposed CoP Changes for Singles

Mathman said:

It seems to me that every poster who has contributed to this thread agrees that the concept of deciding a competition by following ISU guidelines and adding up points is so far from any kind of reality that we have to ask, is it really worth it to keep up the pretense?

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I don't think we do have that kind of agreement.

BladesofPassion seems to want the technical side of the marking to be even more micromanaged than is currently the case. And also to allow the jduges to manipulate the PCS to intentionally override the technical scores.

You and some others seem to be arguing that we should just go back to letting judges rank the skaters in whatever order they want based on subjective holistic perceptions of the programs with no documentation of the reasons.

We don't yet have a system that can objectively quantify technical content and also accurately measure subjective assessments of quality and combine both those metrics in a meaninful way. There certainly hasn't been one presented in this thread.

Is it worth trying? And finetuning whatever we come up with to fix any significant problems that become apparent?

Should we give up and decide that a system designed for scoring the accuracy of circles and for ranking the content and quality of programs based on edges punctuated with single jumps and other highlight moves is the fairest system possible? Even though and that system was notoriously prone to accusations of bias and politics that were sometimes actually true (and the nature of way the scores were presented encouraged conspiracy theories even when there nothing but the theorists' imaginations to support them)?

Should we decide that what many fans like about skating is subjective appreciation that the aesthetic qualities of the best performances, so the scoring system and rules should be designed to privilege aesthetic appeal over technique?

Or should we appeal instead to those who accuse skating of not being a "real sport" by emphasizing the quantitatable objective aspects and minimizing the impact of the subjective qualitative ones?

Should we agree that there will never be a fair comprehensive way to determine skating results, but the most fun part of following the sport is complaining about whatever the current official rules are? If so, maybe we shouldn't suggest any good changes -- because then if the ISU does adopt them, we'd just have to start complaining about our own ideas on the principle that the status quo by definition is always wrong.

gkelly's post is applause worthy. Thank you.

Mathman said:

Really? I do not see any difference between short programs and long programs except that short programs usually have a more unified theme and better choreography, and that short programs are (often mercifully) shorter.

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The short program has always placed an emphasis on technical elements -- in fact at one point it was actually called the technical program. This is why there are required elements in the short, whereas the only required elements in the long program are an axel-type jump, a spin with a flying entry, and a solo spin (and these really aren't requirements in the same way as the short program elements are, since the short requires more specific versions of these, such as a 2A specifically, for women). You can also look to the fact that the tie-breaker for the short is the TES for another example of this emphasis.

I also agree with gkelly's post. We certainly don't have universal agreement in this thread that the current method is so far from reality that it's not worth trying anymore.

gkelly said:

The theory behind the IJS is that judges are no longer supposed to be ranking skaters -- they're just supposed to be judging what they see on the ice and let the system figure out the results.

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Yes, and that's fine.

But judges should know what their scores add up to. If a judge thinks "this performance deserves XXX score in total PCS", the ability to determine that should be readily available in front of them so that they know exactly what range of scores their PCS marks need to fall in.

gkelly said:

Now suppose that judges are still informed about downgrades, or they can see the TES before they give their PCS so they can figure out from the totals that Tom must not have gotten credit for rotating that quad. Do you really want the first judge to be able to say to herself "That was a darn good quad attempt! It's a travesty the way this system undervalues athletic risk! I know this skater only deserves PCS in the 7s (and that's what I would have given him if the caller gave that quad proper credit), but I'm going to give him 9.5 for Skating Skills and Performance/Execution just to make up for that boneheaded downgrade!"?

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I definitely wouldn't want this. But that's why we NEED the judging to not be anonymous.

Any judge who gives out marks that like should immediately be removed.

In 6.0, there was enough room to play around between the tech and artistic marks such that judges could justify almost any result in placements.

In CoP, every single thing is marked. If a judge goes overboard in any area, and if the judging is not anonymous, we will see it and be able to easily call them out.

The potential shame that judges face would keep them from cheating. They don't have as much of a veil to hind behind as they did in 6.0 because they can't simply give a skater any technical mark (or artistic mark, to a much lesser extent) they want to and still be able to look plausible.

gkelly said:

I don't think we do have that kind of agreement...

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Well, I have been picking on the IJS because this thread seemed a good place to do so. But actually, I am with gsrossano who once posted. "I support the new judging system a full 51%."

What I really think is, the more things change the more they stay the same. I think the new judging system has not really made judging more (or less) objective, it has merely taken away some of the subjective judgments from the judges and given them to the technical panel.

I do not think the new system is any better (or worse) at discouraging judges from cheating and conspiring. I do not think the new system is any more (or less) imune to ISU politics. I do not think the new judging system is any more (or less) transparent to figure skating fans (except possibly for the feature of judges anonymity, on the ";ess" side.).

I do not think the new judging system makes figure skating any more (or less) of a "real sport." I do not think the new judging system produces better (or worse) performances on the part of the skaters. I do not think the new judging system is bad (or good) in terms of the popularity of figure skating as a spectator sport. I do not think the new judging system is any more (or less) likely to forestall Salt Lake City type judging controversies in the future.

I do think (thanks to several posts by gkelly on this topic) that the new judging system is benefitial to skating programs at levels below international elite, especially for children in juveniles, etc.

So, yes, I am 51% on board with the CoP.

Mathman said:

Well, I have been picking on the IJS because this thread seemed a good place to do so. But actually, I am with gsrossano who once posted. "I support the new judging system a full 51%."

What I really think is, the more things change the more they stay the same. I think the new judging system has not really made judging more (or less) objective, it has merely taken away some of the subjective judgments from the judges and given them to the technical panel.

I do not think the new system is any better (or worse) at discouraging judges from cheating and conspiring. I do not think the new system is any more (or less) imune to ISU politics. I do not think the new judging system is any more (or less) transparent to figure skating fans (except possibly for the feature of judges anonymity, on the ";ess" side.).

I do not think the new judging system makes figure skating any more (or less) of a "real sport." I do not think the new judging system produces better (or worse) performances on the part of the skaters. I do not think the new judging system is bad (or good) in terms of the popularity of figure skating as a spectator sport. I do not think the new judging system is any more (or less) likely to forestall Salt Lake City type judging controversies in the future.

I do think (thanks to several posts by gkelly on this topic) that the new judging system is benefitial to skating programs at levels below international elite, especially for children in juveniles, etc.

So, yes, I am 51% on board with the CoP.

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Hmmm, a very realistic post imo.
I am 49% (although that figure could be wrong because I am not as good at math as you are ).

I would disagree about one of your conclusions. When casual fans tuned in and heard Button say the new system was too complicated and that even he did not understand it I think that set a tone. To this day I hear Scott and others make negative remarks about CoP and I don't see NBC making much attempt to explain it to casual fans. Boitano has criticized CoP in interviews and so has Johnny. Evan has said it is hard for fans to understand and Sasha has said in interviews she doesn't understand it and tries not to think about it. I believe Michelle has made negative remarks about Cop too.

Whether CoP is good or bad, I think the American public has been fed a steady diet of negative remarks about it since 2006. Skating icons like Button, Hamilton and Boitano have influence over skating fans.

Mathman said:

I think the new judging system has not really made judging more (or less) objective, it has merely taken away some of the subjective judgments from the judges and given them to the technical panel.

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Actually, almost every decision that the tech panel makes is about as objective as you can get in this sport. They're pretty much going down a list of bullet points and checking off Yes or No.

There isn't room in the technical panel's job to give partial credit for partially meeting a requirement. Which makes it more objective, but also less forgiving.

The problem is that sometimes No means a significant loss of points compared to what the element would have earned if the answer was Yes, and the line between Yes and No, although objectively drawn, is also somewhat arbitrary in the way it was originally chosen the way the rules were written.

For example, a jump is supposed to be landed completely backward after the intended number of revolutions from where it took off, with a leeway of 90 degrees or less. If it's clearly more than 90 degrees short, even just by a little bit more, the value of the jump is changed to that of a significantly easier element.

For another example, the short program spiral sequence requires three spiral positions, at least one on each foot (i.e., one on one foot and two on the other), and the definition of spiral position (free foot at or above hip height) has to be met for 3 seconds. If a skater does two great spirals that are held for more than enough time on one foot, and one beautiful spiral that lasts for just 2.5 seconds from the instant the foot first reaches hip height until it's lowered down below the hip again, as timestamped on the video replay, in a short program the tech panel will call the sequence as no level and it will get no points. No base value, and even the +GOEs given by the judges will end up not getting added to the total score.
That is a very objective determination, but the effect on the skater's point total can be quite harsh.

Meanwhile, if a skater's execution of an element or a defining aspect of an element is not a clear Yes or No but rather a Maybe -- can't tell for sure in real time and even with slow-motion replay there's some ambiguity -- then the tech panel are supposed to give the skater the benefit of the doubt. But sometimes there's so much doubt that two of the three members of the panel may be convinced enough the skater did not meet the requirement to call it that way. Not because of their personal opinions about what should or shouldn't be rewarded, but because of their visual perceptions of what the skater did. Do we want to call slight differences in perception an example of subjectivity?

This is only an issue when the skater's execution is very close to that cutoff line. Tech specialists advise the skaters to "stay out of the gray areas" in their execution of the elements.

The skaters, of course, can only do the best their bodies can do. So when they're pushing their own limits to try to add difficulty, they may have several elements they can execute up to standard only some of the time, or they may consistently execute them right on the line between good enough to get credit and not quite there.

It might actually be beneficial to the skaters to find a way to make the tech panel's decisions more subjective.

Much of what the judges are doing is by its nature more subjective. More often they're not answering "Yes or No" but rather "How well?" (on a scale of 0 to 10 or -3 to +3) And often those decisions also involve weighing different aspects of an element or of a series of criteria against each other to come up with one GOE or one PCS mark.

The scoring system itself builds in the relative values of different elements and, roughly, of components vs. elements. As individuals we may disagree with some of those weightings, but at least they're consistent and clearly spelled out.

Under the old system, I'd say the scoring was >90% subjective, including the scoring of technical merit.

Under the new system, taking into account both the base marks assigned by the tech panel and the most obvious bullet points for GOEs especially negative ones, I'd say that 30-50% of the scoring is objective.

janetfan said:

I would disagree about one of your conclusions. When casual fans tuned in and heard Button say the new system was too complicated and that even he did not understand it I think that set a tone.

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I think that's true, but I think that says more about Button's approach to commentary than it does about the system itself.

He has always belittled the technical details of judging and encouraged viewers to look at the big picture of performances in aesthetic terms. That was how to sell a technical sport to a public of nonskaters when ABC started covering skating in the 1960s, and it may account for there being more overlap between skating fans and arts fans than between skating fans and fans of sports like diving or ski jumping or dressage among the American viewing public. And other networks and other commentators have more or less tended to follow suit.

I think we see in the Internet age that skating fans are a lot more capable of understanding details about technique and scoring than he or this producers ever gave credit for. Threads like this wouldn't be possible otherwise.

But TV broadcasts are pressed for time and have to draw in first-time viewers as well as aficionados. So the history of US skating broadcasts has been to oversimplify and overdramatize to tell their own story. If your only access to skating is through the media, what you're seeing is a highly mediated account, not the reality of the sport itself.

gkelly said:

I think that's true, but I think that says more about Button's approach to commentary than it does about the system itself.

He has always belittled the technical details of judging and encouraged viewers to look at the big picture of performances in aesthetic terms. That was how to sell a technical sport to a public of nonskaters when ABC started covering skating in the 1960s, and it may account for there being more overlap between skating fans and arts fans than between skating fans and fans of sports like diving or ski jumping or dressage among the American viewing public. And other networks and other commentators have more or less tended to follow suit.

I think we see in the Internet age that skating fans are a lot more capable of understanding details about technique and scoring than he or this producers ever gave credit for. Threads like this wouldn't be possible otherwise.

But TV broadcasts are pressed for time and have to draw in first-time viewers as well as aficionados. So the history of US skating broadcasts has been to oversimplify and overdramatize to tell their own story. If your only access to skating is through the media, what you're seeing is a highly mediated account, not the reality of the sport itself.

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Good points and I can't disagree with them.
But I was addressing mathman's comments and his remarks about CoP vs 6.0 and whether or not the public preferred one system over the other.

It is easy enough to say the public never understood 6.0 very well, with it's ordinals, let alone the school figures.

I recall just last week, Scott commented about Cop programs being too difficult for the Ladies. What else was he supposed to say to the the viewers as they witnessed some very sloppy skating?

My point was about how casual fans view skating, what they hear from their commentators and skating icons and of course - very few care for the anonymous marks, including staunch proponents of CoP.

ETA: Something that could be mentioned was how NBC made it a point to show Yuna getting dinged by the tech caller on her SP. NBC did not cover the SP's but did show Yuna's 3x3 - and Scott said something like" that was a bad call, that jump looked perfect to me."

I don't think CoP is fan friendly and NBC doesn't mind pointing it out. And why not since "fan friendly" equals more viewers and more advertsing revenue in their minds.

kate said:

The short program has always placed an emphasis on technical elements -- in fact at one point it was actually called the technical program. .

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Still...it may have been the intent to make the short program somehow more "technical" than the long, but I don't think they have succeeded in this intent.

I do not see a single technical skill that skaters are supposed to exhibit in the short program that they are not also expected to exhibit in the long. I do not see the slightest difference between a skater's technique on her double Axel in the short and her double Axel in the long, nor in her sitspin technique or anything else.

If fact, to me, it is the opposite. The short program is the "artistic" program (more attention to choreographic detail, for instance), and the long program is the "technical" program (twice as many jumping passes.)

Maybe this is what was behind the ISU's decision to dump the artistic versus technical dichotomy in favour of "elements" versus "program."

In the good old days , it was clear what "technical" meant. Technical meant school figures. After you did your school figures, which pretty much determined the outcome of the competition, then you got to do a "fancy skating" exhibition (the lagacy of Jackson Haines :agree: ) to show off for the crowd. Jumping and spinning on the ice were assigned to the show-off part of the sport, not to the technical part.

Now we have turned that upside down. Showing off is now "technical" and precise edge-work is "artistic."

(Not that I am complaining. School figures were no fun for the children who had to learn them, no fun for the top skaters who had to master and present them, and no fun for the audience (if any) who watched them.)

Mathman said:

I do not see a single technical skill that skaters are supposed to exhibit in the short program that they are not also expected to exhibit in the long. I

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I already named one -- 2A. You cannot do a 1A or a 3A (ladies) in the short program instead of a 2A, and you cannot do a 1A instead of a 2A or 3A (men). There are actually penalties in the short for doing so vs. the long where you simply miss a chance for points. Or the requirement to do a triple out of footwork, or a specific jump each year for junior. Or a layback (ladies), or specific solo spin in junior (junior men), or camel or sit solo spin (senior men). Or a specific flying spin (junior). Or a one position flying spin (senior). These are all required in the short and not in the long.

kate said:

I already named one -- 2A. You cannot do a 1A or a 3A (ladies) in the short program instead of a 2A, and you cannot do a 1A instead of a 2A or 3A (men). There are actually penalties in the short for doing so vs. the long where you simply miss a chance for points. Or the requirement to do a triple out of footwork, or a specific jump each year for junior. Or a layback (ladies), or specific solo spin in junior (junior men), or camel or sit solo spin (senior men). Or a specific flying spin (junior). Or a one position flying spin (senior). These are all required in the short and not in the long.

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I was not thinking so much about rules, requirements, and penaltiies as I was about technique.. To me, the point of a "technical" program is to demonstrate "technique."

I still do not see any technique demonstrated in the short program that is different from technique demonstrated in the long.

The fact that a lady must do a 2A instead of a 3A in the short program does not seem to me to be a good argument for regarding the short program as more "technical" than the long.

gkelly said:

Actually, almost every decision that the tech panel makes is about as objective as you can get in this sport....

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I can agree with this. At least I can't think of a better one.

I am pretty sure you can convince me to up my support for the IJS to 60-40.

For example, a jump is supposed to be landed completely backward after the intended number of revolutions from where it took off, with a leeway of 90 degrees or less. If it's clearly more than 90 degrees short, even just by a little bit more, the value of the jump is changed to that of a significantly easier element.

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I think this is the perfect example of why we should not be in the business of comparing figure skating to other sports, or of borrowing scoring systems from them.

In a "real sport" like footbal, there is no rule that says, "if you make it to the ten yard line, we'll count that as a touchdown, but if you only make it to the fifteen, it's not."

There is no rule in baseball that says, "if a ball is hit ten inches outside the foul pole then it's fair, but if it's eleven inches out then it's foul."

Should we agree that there will never be a fair comprehensive way to determine skating results, but the most fun part of following the sport is complaining about whatever the current official rules are? If so, maybe we shouldn't suggest any good changes -- because then if the ISU does adopt them, we'd just have to start complaining about our own ideas on the principle that the status quo by definition is always wrong.

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Actually, that raises an interesting question, one that I do not know the answer to. Did people a decade ago do a lot of complaining about how awful the ordinal system was?

Certainly people complained about the results of individual constest. My fave was robbed, the judges are cheating, everything is politics, how could anyone in his right mind think that Fusar-Poli and Margaglio were better than Bourne and Kraatz, Speedy is an idiot, etc. But did people really find a lot of fault with the actual system?

Mathman said:

Certainly people complained about the results of individual constest. My fave was robbed, the judges are cheating, everything is politics, how could anyone in his right mind think that Fusar-Poli and Margaglio were better than Bourne and Kraatz, Speedy is an idiot, etc. But did people really find a lot of fault with the actual system?

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I think this brings up a good point. For me personally, I often disagreed with the results in 6.0 - too many politics, so and so was robbed, people were held down, can't believe they won, etc. As for the COP I often agree with the placements at the end of the competition but there are sometimes where I think the scores were a bit too high or low for some skaters.

ts

i love to skate said:

I think this brings up a good point. For me personally, I often disagreed with the results in 6.0 - too many politics, so and so was robbed, people were held down, can't believe they won, etc. As for the COP I often agree with the placements at the end of the competition but there are sometimes where I think the scores were a bit too high or low for some skaters.

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It seems to me that we are talking about the two systems that we know - 6.0 and COP. Maybe someday another system will appear and open up yet aniother system for discussion.

For the two systems we know , a fan has to believe that the judges do not make mistakes. that's extremely important in a judged sport The CoP seminar on how to use the system did not teach them how to judge (they already knew their own method of judging) but how to apply the points required to score an element.

The technical score uses a technical panel for decision making on individual elements. The program component score offers a descriptive guide with a series of 'bullits' for judging the 'old Whole Program', none of which can be quantifiable. There are no 'base values' in the PC scores. However a numeric score is arrived at as a personal option of a judge.

With the exception of the scoring of the base value system with its penalties, the remainder of the CoP is extremely familiar with the 6.0 system and almost as subjective.

The CoP can be beneficial to some skaters who would not fare well in the 6.0 system....But does it really give us the BEST SKATER IN A COMPETITION?

Joesitz said:

It seems to me that we are talking about the two systems that we know - 6.0 and COP. Maybe someday another system will appear and open up yet aniother system for discussion.

For the two systems we know , a fan has to believe that the judges do not make mistakes. that's extremely important in a judged sport The CoP seminar on how to use the system did not teach them how to judge (they already knew their own method of judging) but how to apply the points required to score an element.

The technical score uses a technical panel for decision making on individual elements. The program component score offers a descriptive guide with a series of 'bullits' for judging the 'old Whole Program', none of which can be quantifiable. There are no 'base values' in the PC scores. However a numeric score is arrived at as a personal option of a judge.

With the exception of the scoring of the base value system with its penalties, the remainder of the CoP is extremely familiar with the 6.0 system and almost as subjective.

The CoP can be beneficial to some skaters who would not fare well in the 6.0 system....But does it really give us the BEST SKATER IN A COMPETITION?

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Very good post Joe - and a very interesting last question.
I am waiting for others to answer.
I would only say CoP gets it right most of the time - but to me it feels like for the wrong reasons. I think it works in a convoluted manner which backfires even when it is accidentily right,

Cop declared Akiko a better technical skater than Yuna and Miki at the GPF.
It also said Miki and Yuna gave a better presentation and said Akiko was inferior in IN and choreo.

It sounds like CoP was exactly wrong. I think examining the men's marks we see again CoP was way off at the GPF.

I think the judges today are still placing the skaters almost exactly the same way they did under 6.0. They are just using lots of numbers and hiding the marks from us. They use the pcs to fix up outcomes that don't make sense to them and thus Akiko, the real winner of the GPF is placed third.

Mathman said:

I was not thinking so much about rules, requirements, and penaltiies as I was about technique.. To me, the point of a "technical" program is to demonstrate "technique."

I still do not see any technique demonstrated in the short program that is different from technique demonstrated in the long.

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This has always been true of short programs, ever since the early 70s. Or, I expect, the early 60s for pairs, which was the first discipline to adopt short programs. But I haven't seen any pairs SPs from that era.

The technique of the elements required in the SP isn't any different from the technique of the same elements when performed in the long program.

The difference is that, historically, there were very specific elements required in the SP and no elements required in the LP.

Starting in the 1988-1989 season, there was a lot more freedom of choice given to senior singles skaters as to what elements they could include in their SPs. There are still more specified elements for pairs and junior singles.

Before then, almost all the SP elements were quite specific. Skaters only got to choose one of the jumps in the combination, the actual steps but not the shape of the step sequence, and the positions in the combo spin (and position variations in the flying spin and solo spin, but the basic position was specified).

As of 1989, most of the requirements for seniors have just been of categories of elements. Some of the definitions of the categories, especially the number of revolutions allowed in the various jump elements, has changed for men and/or women a few times over the last 20 years.

So short programs AKA technical programs have gotten a bit freer over the decades than their original conception. There are still some requirements that are stricter than comparable elements in the long programs.

[At that point, because the short programs were now freer than they used to be, the name was temporarily changed to "original program," along with the change from "original set pattern dance" to "original dance." Then TBTB realized that didn't make much sense in the freestyle context, given that SPs were slightly less original in their construction than long programs. So the name was changed to "technical program" ca. 1993-94, and then it was officially changed back to "short program."]

On the other hand, long programs were and still are referred to as "free programs" or the "freeskating" phase of the competition. That name comes from the distinction between school figures and freeskating, but it continued to be meaningful as a distinction between short programs

Also in the mid-90s the content of the free programs started to get defined a little more. Now, in addition to the Zayak rule about repeating jumps, it was required to include at least one jump combination or sequence, but not more than three. And the concept of "well-balanced program" was introduced with guidelines for what kinds of elements free programs should include. There were also expectations introduced for the number of revolutions in LP spins. Because there are more different kinds of elements in pairs than singles, the guidelines for pair LPs were already fairly restrictive.

Around the turn of the 21st century, the well-balanced program language was changed to be more prescriptive than just guidelines. There were minimum numbers of different kinds of elements that must be included, or else the judges were supposed to penalize their lack with deductions. But we never knew for sure whether that happened.

As these well-balanced program rules got more prescriptive, the construction of free programs became more similar from one skater to the next.

So ~8 years ago there were minimum numbers of spins and step sequences. There was no penalty for doing more than the minimum (except for too many repeated jumps or too many combos, but there was no limit on the total number of jump passes). Judges could give whatever weight they wanted to whichever of the elements they thought were important, regardless of order of execution, and they were free to ignore or give less weight to incomplete elements or easier moves (e.g., single jumps, brief spins) used more for as choreographic highlights than as technical elements.

Then the IJS was introduced and every element now had a point value. In order to prevent skaters from racking up points just by doing more elements than the next guy, the well-balanced program rules were changed to give maximums instead of minimums for each kind of element. There are a limited number of slots for each element type, and the skater only gets credit for the elements that fit in the slots. Once the last jump or spin slot is filled up, there's no value to doing another element of that type.

Also an axel-type jump is now required in the long program. A spin in one position (with or without variations) is now required, as well as a combo spin and a flying spin.

De facto the maximums are also minimums because a skater who chooses not to fill all the slots loses an opportunity to gain points and can't make them up with a different kind of element. If you do a single jump or a 4-revolution spin (meets the definition of the element but earns very few points), you waste a slot, so those kinds of moves have effectively disappeared from the repertoire.

If you do too many of the same kind of spin element or jump element, the extra element can fill a slot, earn no credit, and also cause a later element not to get credit either. Incorrect element planning or trying to think on one's skates can end up being very costly.

There are still various types of moves that are legal and often valuable to use in long programs that are never legal in a short program. For example, a jump sequence or a flying combination spin.

There are also elements that are legal only in certain short programs: e.g., juniors can do jump combos of 2+2, 2+3, or 3+3 revolutions; seniors must have at least one triple in the combo. Juniors must do flying sit or flying camel as specified each year; seniors are allowed to choose either one at their discretion and also have the option of flying upright spin.

So short programs moved closer to the freedom of long programs ca. 1989.

Long programs moved closer to the restrictions of short programs ca. 2004 with the IJS. It's less meaningful to call it a "free program" now that there's so much less freedom of element choice.

However, it is my personal belief that there is no real need for the well-balanced program rules to be quite so restrictive. It would still be fair to allow skaters a maximum number of point-earning elements but give the skaters themselves more choice about what kinds of elements could fill those slots.
BladesofPassion agrees with me on this point as we discussed earlier in the thread -- we just have slightly different ideas of what the new rules should be.
I'd also like to define some new types of elements that could also be used in long programs to gain points.

Mathman said:

I think this is the perfect example of why we should not be in the business of comparing figure skating to other sports, or of borrowing scoring systems from them.

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I agree, but I think there might be some more meaningful parallels with other judged sports. Especially sports that involve twisting around the long axis of the body as a parallel to jump rotations.
There is indeed very little in common between figure skating and team ball sports.

Actually, that raises an interesting question, one that I do not know the answer to. Did people a decade ago do a lot of complaining about how awful the ordinal system was?

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Cinquanta certainly did. The 1997 Europeans men's event got him into a real tizzy.

I think there were more complaints from people outside the skating world -- journalists, new fans, members of the IOC, etc. -- who tried to understand the scoring in terms they already understood from other contexts. Which, as you point out, are often completely irrelevant to how skating works.

People within the sport were used to the ordinal system and its vagaries.
The aim was to rank the skaters, and it did a pretty good job of that compared with other means of ranking. Flipflops in the standings were confusing to the uninitiated because it was necessary to understand both how ordinals worked and how factored placements work to understand why interim results were often meaningless. And the TV commentators, even the way results were announced in the venue during a competition, didn't do a good job of initiating the audience into that understanding.

I was really only in a position to come across complaints from the outside -- fans and journalists. And low-level competitors and their parents first getting introduced to the ordinal system. Much bewilderment there and much jumping to conclusions that if they didn't understand the results the judges must be doing something wrong.

I don't know how much of an effort there was behind the scenes by officials to rethink scoring in terms of judging the skating rather than ranking the skaters before 2002. My understanding was that it started in 1998 as a "back-burner" project that was moved to the front burner after the SLC scandal.

gkelly said:

At that point, because the short programs were now freer than they used to be, the name was temporarily changed to "original program," along with the change from "original set pattern dance" to "original dance." Then TBTB realized that didn't make much sense in the freestyle context, given that SPs were slightly less original in their construction than long programs.

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A little off topic, but I always wondered about the term "original dance." The only thing I could figue out was that it was more original than the compulsory dances, but not as free as the free dance. Makes perfect sense. :yes:

Flipflops in the standings were confusing to the uninitiated because it was necessary to understand both how ordinals worked and how factored placements work to understand why interim results were often meaningless.

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Even within one segment! I still have to stop and work out examples in my head to make sure I still understand how OBO flipflops come about. (In fact, I am teaching a course right now on the mathematics of "Voting Systems and Social Choice" and we are using this as an example of why there is no such thing as a perfect voting system that always gets it right. )

So, in your opinion, what is the bottom line on the short program? Are the short and long programs sufficiently different that it is better to add the total points rather than bring placements only forward to the LP? Or are the differences and similarities of the SP and LP irrelevant to this question?

Mathman said:

Even within one segment! I still have to stop and work out examples in my head to make sure I still understand how OBO flipflops come about.

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The mess at 97 Euros with the old majority system. There's a detailed explanation in the middle of this article.

The OBO system for calculating the results came about in response to that event and was adopted for 1998-99.

And here there's an analysis of 1998 season events as if they had been scored under OBO instead of the majority system. It demonstrates that there would still have been some flipflops, thus arguing that the change from majority ordinals to OBO was unnecessary if the justification for adopting OBO was to prevent flipflops.

No system would eliminate flipflops in the second phase of the event using a factored placement system.

If we kept IJS for scoring each program but then converted results for each program to factored placements and threw out the scores, there would once again be misleading interim standings. E.g., Tony places behind Nick in the long program. Tony's scores are announced, and the standings are announced as Tony 1st, Nick 2nd. Only if you wrote down Nick's long program score would you realize that Tony didn't beat it. Then Angelo skates and places behind both of them, but now Nick is in 1st place overall and Tony is 2nd. Flipflop!

So, in your opinion, what is the bottom line on the short program? Are the short and long programs sufficiently different that it is better to add the total points rather than bring placements only forward to the LP? Or are the differences and similarities of the SP and LP irrelevant to this question?

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I don't think it's directly relevant to the question.

I think the real question is whether it's appropriate to preserve the margin of victory from one program to the next.

I actually like that there's now a meaningful way to do so. But I don't think the numbers always quite work out right. I haven't really thought through the specifics of how they might work better.

Also, I've been arguing in favor of more flexibility in free program element choice. If we think that not only should the free program be freer but the short program should be more about required elements, then it might make sense to rethink the first phase of the competition as well.

Are we talking about an ideal world where budgetary considerations and the inertia of the existing status quo are irrelevant and we can imagine a new system completely from scratch (or go back to the old system if that's determined to be the best solution)? Or should we take into consideration how we could get there from here?

The use of scoring individual numbers in the Tech works well together with the Tech Specialist's advice on individual errors of technique.

But how are the numbers reached in the PC scores? There are no base values or individual numbers for the PC scores. It simply is arbitrary as it was in the 6.0 system.

The whole package is reached by 25% math and 75% opinion.