Does anyone miss the "old" judging system?

[gkelly]

The strange thing to me, in reading about this, is that the "flip-flops" that people were in such an uproar about in that competition were almost entirely due to factored placements, rather than actual violations of the technical condition of "independence of irrelevant alternatives" (as game theorists call it).

It was both. Vlascenko didn't get between any of the medal contenders in the free, but he stole ordinals from them, which shuffled the freeskate placements, not just the overall factored placements between short and long.

One thing that significantly changed is that before Vlascenko skated, Zagorodniuk was ahead of Candeloro in the free skate. After Vlascenko, mixed-up ordinals moved Candeloro ahead of Zagorodniuk in the free, and that's what mixed up the factored placements.

IMHO all the befuddled commentators needed to say was, "Well folks, hold on to your hats. We are in for a big ranking roller coaster this evening, if the trend continues of the leaders in the SP falling apart in the long."

Under both systems, the announcements in the arena need(ed) to do a better job of distinguishing between the freeskate placements and the overall placements. It's very confusing to see freeskate scores that put the bad program you just saw obviously or not so obviously behind a good program you saw earlier and then hear that the skater with the bad performance is now in first place (or vice versa, in events where freeskate order is random by warmup group and not reverse order of SP standings).

And then TV commentators could do even more to explain to new viewers how the math works, especially with 6.0 because the potential for constantly shifting placements is not intuitive. Once you understand the system, if you have all the ordinals in front of you it's easy to predict when place switching is likely, unlikely, or impossible. But it takes some study, which TV does not really have the time to teach properly. (And some commentators might not themselves fully grasp the mechanics of it to begin with.)

 

[Sam L]

Does anyone think that the 6.0 system can ever make a comeback?

 

[Mathman]

Does anyone think that the 6.0 system can ever make a comeback?

II don't think so. The ISU is committed to the current system, and the fans who remember 6.0 will grdually die out.

 

[Sam L]

Lol true. But I'm not planning on dying anytime soon and I'll always favour my beloved 6.0.

 

[karne]

Does anyone think that the 6.0 system can ever make a comeback?

No, and nor should it. And in fact it would be better for the sport as a whole if the fans took a hint from a recent Disney movie: LET IT GO. It's not exactly going to appeal to casual viewers if die-hard fans are wailing and whining about how the old system was so much better and the "new" system (new? It's been twelve years people!) is so terrible.

 

[Mathman]

It's not exactly going to appeal to casual viewers if die-hard fans are wailing and whining about how the old system was so much better and the "new" system...is so terrible.

I think you are overestimating the effect of whining old codgers on casual and prospective new viewers. Unless those new, casual viewers read Golden Skate.