Yes, but 6.0 was an obviously judged sport. IJS is supposedly a neutral scientific system.
Not really.
A big part of the change in scoring system, as I see it, is to take the quantifiable parts and quantify them, as objectively as possible. But the qualitative parts are still subject to human perception and human judgment and always will be. Breaking down the scores can't change the nature of what is being scored -- but it can show us in more detail how each part of the program contributed to the score.
In fact it shows us in so much detail that there isn't time to show it while the event is in progress. So you have to go out of your way to seek out the information, but at least it's available, which was never the case in 6.0.
The anonymity in international senior events is another issue entirely that muddles up the discussion.
That's why audiences feel befuddled, IMO. It acts just like 6.0 but in a less honest way. We don't even get to heap burning coals on the individual judges' heads because we don't know who scored what.
If it's more fun to heap coals than to evaluate the skating itself, there's something wrong with the way the sport is sold to the public -- something wrong that started way back in the 6.0 era in the Cold War or before.
Linking judges to their scores would make the fans more involved. Making the tech call process more transparent would help too.
I agree that making the process more transparent would be more educational and involving. The trick is how to do so in real time, both live (ISU's responsibility) and on TV (networks' responsibility).
For anyone willing to read the protocols after the fact, IJS is already a lot more transparent than placeholder scores that gave no information about how they were arrived at aside from who gave them.
But for casual fans who only get to hear the total scores announced, it's not very informative.
Of course that means they are going to get booed from time to time, and I'm not sure they get paid enough for that. (They're expense-paid volunteers, right?)
I believe that is true of the technical panels as well as the judges, although there had been some talk of paying the tech panels more than that.
Slight sidetrack: I noticed on a Eurosport vid that they had access to the judges' scores while they were still in process. (They mentioned seeing the numbers move around.) I must have missed this in the past. Does that mean the judges are obviously playing with their scores to get the placements they want? If so, there goes the objectivity of ISJ.
I'd have to know what the Eurosport commentators actually said, and what they were referring to which they might not have made clear.
My guess is that what they were referring to is that the technical panel reviews elements after the program is over, which may change the levels or underrotation calls or even which elements are identified and credited. Then the judges also have the opportunity to change their GOEs before submitting their marks if the element calls change.
The technical panel members confer with each other during the reviews. The judges don't confer. They also don't know what the totals were for previous skaters or how their scores for the current skater compare. So they might change their mind about a GOE here or there or even a component here or there in the few minutes between when they first enter the scores and when they finalize them, but it's probably not going to make much difference overall.
What can have a big effect is if the tech panel changes their mind about how to classify an element. Certainly if the commentators have access to technical scores in real time based on full base value for jumps and then the tech panel downgrades one or more jumps after the review, that can result in a significantly lower score.
If the tech panel decides after review something like "that doesn't count as a combination spin with change of foot; the extra step at the change of foot makes it into two separate spins, the second one doesn't count because she already did a combination spin with the same code, and the last spin in the program doesn't count because it's the fourth spin element" then the skater is going to lose a lot of points because of that relatively small mistake changing feet in the spin.
If you look at the protocols and you're familiar with the rules you could see what must have happened. The commentators aren't always that knowledgeable about the fine points of the technical calls (unless they're technical specialists themselves) and even if they know what happened when they think about it and look at the protocols, they may not have time to explain in real time.
