I seems to me that the premise of those who are against the anonymous judging of COP base their complaint on the assumption that the ISU as a whole can and will control which skaters will win medals. I find this argument completely spurious since the ISU has no reason to want anything but fair competition. If the judging were really blatently fixed the sport would not last and the ISU know this..
I would think that keeping larger, more powerful federations who control more $$ would provide plenty of reasons for competitions that are not fair. I agree that if the judging were ALWAYS, as in EVERY SINGLE TIME, blatantly unfair, then the sport would not last. But a certain amount of scandal probably drives more interest in the sport, such as Harding's cohorts' attack on Kerrigan, the 2002 pairs scandal, etc. Part of the reason likely being the behavioral principle that random results actually produce behavior that is very resistant to extinction, whereas consistent negative results, being predictable, suppress behavior quickly. So some people keep tuning in to see what will happen THIS TIME.
But obviously the needed thresholds for staying interested in and/or believing in the system will differ for different individuals. Some of us find the rate of reinforcement ("correct" or "fair" results) to still be enough to keep us watching our TVs or internet feeds or buying tickets, especially if we have other factors interesting us, like being a big fan or family member of someone competing. If we have these other vested interests, we're also going to have added motivation to believe in the system -- because if we didn't believe in it, we'd just quit. That motivation's gotta be incredibly strong for the athletes, too -- some part of them has to believe in the system, or they must have enough other reasons to do it (like they love skating enough despite results or it provides income or they are independently wealthy and just find it fun, etc.), or they wouldn't compete at all.
Others, such as my DH, can still admire the skating but deride any attempts to view it as a competition. He can't believe I still get emotionally invested in the results as he sees it all as being completely rigged and bogus.
Just wanted to point out that from Mathman's link, the statistics quoted previously on judging Assessments applied to Singles and Pairs only. Just below that (in the link) are the Ice Dance stats, which showed a total of 11 Assessments (one judge getting three), but a different split: only 2 were for Program Components and 9 were for Technical. Interesting difference between the disciplines, though with such a small sample size, not sure how statistically significant this is.
And we don't know if these Assessments represent the actual total number of computer flagged wonky judgments, or just a subset that include only the ones that were computer flagged and then officially investigated and reported by the ISU.
A total of 17 warning were given. Two judges each received two warnings. No one received three warnings.
Of these warnings, 10 were on program components, 4 were on technical elements, 2 were for both, and one was for a poor referee's report.
By the way, section 10 of this same document specifies the procedure ny which members can submit proposals for future rules changes.
This seems like a small number of sanctions compared to competitions, but I really don't know the total number of judged events and the total number of judgements involved so it's hard to make much out of it. But there was only one judge with 3 flags, but we don't know what if any sanction was imposed, right?
Interesting on the difference between dance and the other disciplines re: where the outliers occurred.
The individual federations do not know who the judges are - only the ISU. In basis of past Olympics - I would say that annoymous judging is working. 6.0 had many Olympics and so far the COP has had one - let's give it another shot, that's all I'm saying.
This really does seem to be saying that 2006 was better because potential scandals were hidden better, not because there were legitimately fewer reasons for there to BE a scandal. Is this really what is being argued here, that problems are being hidden better, and that's a good thing? Or am I misunderstanding what's being said?
"Dear Mr Cinquanta, I notice that judge number 4 on skater X's sheet relating to the 3Lz must be smoking crack because skater X did a great triple lutz for which the rest of the panel gave +2 GOE yet crack smoking judge in position 4 for the element in the protocol sheet gave a -2GOE. What are you going to do about it? Love and kisses antmanb xxx"
