Well, I'm all in favor of CoP. I think it is a much better system than the old politically subverted 6.0 system. First of all, there IS NO SUCH THING AS PERFECTION!
Remember, the 6.0 standard was invented to measure the perfection of circles drawn on the ice, three times on each foot.
There is a platonic ideal of a perfect circle. If one perfect circle is worth 1.0, then six perfect circles drawn perfectly on top of each other would be worth 6.0.
No one ever earned scores anywhere near 6.0 for drawing circles. Trixi Schuba and maybe some other school figures experts occasionally broke 5.0, but that was rare.
The same scoring standard, with 6.0 = perfect and flawless, 5.0 = very good, 4.0 = good, etc., with subdivisions of 0.1, was also used for freeskating programs for over a century.
What would 6.0 = perfect mean in that context? Flawless technique throughout? Regardless of the difficulty of the technical content? It's actually a pretty meaningless number -- regardless of whether any human being is capable of achieving perfection or not -- because the content of freeskating programs is so variable in any given competition, let alone from one decade to another.
It seemed that in practice 6.0 for technical merit meant "state of the art in terms of technical content, delivered with good quality and no visible errors" or "successful completion of one or more envelope-pushing technical elements with only one or two small to medium flaws elsewhere in the program," as the case may be. Hard to imagine anyone outdoing that performance technically
at the current moment in skating history.
6.0 for artistic impression or presentation meant something like "(at least superficially) flawless execution and emotionally moving performance," the latter part of which would necessarily be somewhat subjective.
Of course sometimes 6.0 just meant "I already gave someone else 5.9/5.9 and this performance was better so I need a 6.0 to put it ahead." Or "I already gave someone else 5.9s or a 5.9 and a 5.8; this performance doesn't quite deserve to beat it but was noticeably better in one of the marks, so I'll give 6.0 for that mark to reward the good areas and 5.8 or 5.7 for the other mark, using the tiebreaker if necessary, to keep the other skater ahead."
At national championships sometimes it meant "Hey, look, international judges! Our champion is the greatest!"
In the last events before the changeover to the new judging system, it could mean "That performance was pretty darn good, and it's our last chance to give out this special mark, so I'm giving it to this performance."
If the CoP existed in Peggy's time we would at least have a metric to help distinguish what was superior in Yuna's programs and what was superior in Peggy's. I think that is valuable information.
I agree (with jatale's whole post, in fact).
I think that, in theory, a code of points can make for much more meaningful comparisons between programs from different eras. For example, if Janet Lynn deserves 8s and 9s and maybe the occasional perfect 10 in PCS for peformances with no triples or one barely held triple, how does that compare to a skater who lands six or seven triples but only deserves PCS in the 5s?
What about fairly comparing skaters in the same event today whose strengths and weaknesses are that different?
However, the well-balanced program rules would need to be a lot more flexible than has been the case for past 7-8 years. So far it's a lost opportunity.
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