Ideally the judges should have to write explanations of their PCS marks, and they would be using a device to check the GOE points which would be released. It's all electronic, so what's the big issue?
The big issue is judges watching the rest of the program while they're taking notes and inputting 6 or 7 data points per element (some of which barely take a couple of seconds to complete) in real time while the skater is already moving on to the next element which the technical panel may call immediately so that it shows up on the screen before the judge has finished inputting all those extra scores for the previous element.
And meanwhile they also need to be thinking about program components as well. Unless the judging panels get split further into GOE judges and PCS judges. Which might be feasible at ISU championship levels but cost prohibitive for large but less prestigious events held around the world.
It would be transparent, and would help the skaters, too. At least think of the athletes, if not the viewers who remain forever confused.
It would be useful information, but it's not possible to record it all in real time. Would it be worth making judges input later for every single bullet point for every single element for every single skater after the fact?
Or would it be more efficient to let judges take shorthand notes and to give skaters a window of an hour or so after the event to study their protocols and have access to ask the judges to clarify any marks they don't understand?
If there's a roundtable discussion after the event, maybe the referee could take notes on what was said about specific notable elements (obviously not every single element in the event) and program components ditto and summarize in a press conference afterward.
It would take WAY longer, and will never happen, but ideally, the 6 GOE bullets would pop up next to a jump, and the judge inputs what GOE bullets they're assigning to the element.
While also watching and evaluating the spin that the skater went into right after the jump.
See my
post 477 in this thread.
Can you design an interface that would allow judges to input multiple data points about the element that just finished or the one that's happening now depending how quickly they finished the previous one while not taking their eyes off the skater for more than a split second at a time?
i saw a "judge in training" at Nationals... she had to work so fast, using symbols, shorthand notes, most of the times, would just write + 2 for a jump without having time to note down all bullets... for spins, she was counting like mad for rotations, positions, variations etc
With enough experience, judging thousands of jumps and spins every year or for some judges every week, it may become second nature to see a jump and tick off the bullet points in her head in real time, especially for elements that have a typical combination of criteria. E.g., you can
think "big, flow, effortless, music" for a jump or "fast, centered, positions, rotations" for a spin in about half a second. And if you see those combinations of bullets frequently, you could just look at that element and think +2 without consciously saying the words to yourself.
Recording them all takes more time, though.
This being said, and as previously mentioned, I am all for using technology to create some objective parts to scoring... ice coverage could easily be done, average speed and height as well...
But I don't think ISU will ever agree to the technology development to some extent. They had the chance for so long, but they didn't improve it. They want it to be subjective, so they can play with the numbers anytime they need them. Otherwise I couldn't think of a reason why they don't wanna use the technology development to the fullest. Are there any?
No one has yet developed a machine or program that measures and calculates exactly what needs to be measured and calculated, in real-world conditions for a skating competition in progress. The basic technological knowledge needed for each piece of the puzzle may already exist in the world now (but likely did not all exist 15 years ago when IJS was first implemented), but you still have to get someone or a dedicated group of people to bring together knowledge about all the relevant hardware and software and knowledge about skating qualities and figure out how to make them all work together to achieve better results than an experienced human eye.
I think we'll get there one of these days for some of these criteria. But the devil is in the details in terms of developing the technology that measures exactly what's needed for what skating wants to reward, in a cost-effective and efficient manner. Once the technology is perfected it can be more accurate than the human eye and brain. But it will take some doing to get there from here.
And ultimately, what many of us love about this sport is exactly the fact that it is qualitative and complex. So decisions about
how good each aspect was and how to balance good and not-so-good aspects of the same element or component will always be subjective to some extent.
It's great to dream big about how skating could be evaluated more accurately -- and even better to offer solutions to the detailed requirements of designing and implementing a system that actually does what you want it to do. If you have the answers, go put together a prototype. And then no doubt other Golden Skaters will tear apart why it doesn't quite work the way we hoped it would.
Just thinking "It should be possible to do this" doesn't mean it will be easy.
Obviously you can’t reduce it completely nor should we try to but understanding how a judge is giving marks and making it clear is vital for athletes and coaches. All judges should get to the scores the same way. They may not agree but the method should be the same. A computer could average up the bullets and assign the judge’s mark and assign the skater’s final factored score. Honestly in addition to improving consistency in how marks are given it may even speed things up. Computers can work pretty fast these days when it comes to polling data.
) but it's a bit astonishing/amusing/flattering(?) to know that certain folks (perhaps ones with a lot of time on their hands?) have actually taken considerable effort to monitor and make mountains out of my molehilly musings, as if what I say is actually super relevant to them in the grand scheme of things. LOL, maybe my opinion is more valuable than I thought! 
and there are people on here who already "get it". 
I certainly wouldn't have developed a better understanding of the new rules if not for clarification from people, or think about the impact of these rules if not for the many opinions/discussion surrounding it in this thread.
