The Dancer I referred to was offering her two cents on Yuna and Mao and she certainly has every right to express an opinion.
Well, sure. Everyone has a right to express an opinion. A gymnast or diver might have the opinion that Plushenko or Reynolds should win because of the most twists in the air with the best technique. A speedskater might believe that Kim or Kostner should win on account of maintaining the best average skating speed. An American Idol judge might believe that Nagasu should win because she connected with the audience best. Or whatever.
But if they're only looking at a small piece of what the sport is about, their opinions will only be partial and not as valid regarding the results as those of people who are knowledgeable about the whole sport. We can certainly learn from the outside insights that people with expertise in related areas can bring. But do we want them to contribute to the official outcome of the events? At most, only partially and only within their areas of expertise.
I generally find myself agreeing with you - or after consideration accepting your view as pretty good and very logical. But I still wonder about the artistic or interpretive part of a skating performance and how much weight it should carry. And it's value to the overall health of the sport.
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Because in a way that is what I feel like I am trying to say as well. Is skating really a sport? Isn't it also entertainment - just like baseball and football exist as we know them for their entertainment values.
That's an important question.
What is the mission of the ISU?
It grew up within the amateur sports/Olympic movement from the late 19th century. Its original mission was to organize and make rules for international competitions in speedskating and figure skating as those sports developed through their amateur practitioners. Speedskating was about racing, and figure skating was about edge control.
For figure skating, that meant establishing standards, based on the knowledge of accomplished skaters/experts and amateur rulemakers among their numbers, of what constitutes good skating and how to determine who delivers the best skating in any given competition. As the top competitors of each era bring new techniques and new standards of performance, the practice of figure skating evolves and so do the rules and expectations by the experts. But fundamentally, figure skating is still a sport based on the control of edges on ice -- twisting in the air or dancing to the music are valued for the ways reflect superior control of the edges on ice, not for their own sake. If you want to enjoy those skills for their own sake without regard to edges on ice, a circus or a dance performance would be more entertaining.
If the mission is it to produce an entertainment product for paying customers and to deliver maximum viewers to paying broadcasters and sponsors, then pleasing the audiences would be of prime concern, and the rules of the sport should be designed to produce the most entertaining events and the participants should train to be able to deliver the most entertaining performances possible, keeping in mind that not only artistic performance but also exciting tricks are entertaining.
Over the decades free skating became more entertaining, and amateur rules became obsolete. But I don't think that meant that the ISU changed its goal for the edges-on-ice-based disciplines (now including ice dance and synchronized skating) from setting and maintaining standards within the Olympic sports movement to producing entertainment extravaganzas for profit. They do want audiences and they do want to bring in enough money to pay the bills and to pay the best skaters. But not at the expense of dumbing down the sport.
I think that pro skating served the entertainment product purpose, but for various reasons there's less of a market for it now, at least in the US, than there was 15 years ago. One of the reasons is that the ISU made efforts to use broadcast rights, eligibility rules, and their own opportunities for elite skaters to make money through ISU events to compete directly with pro events and made them less feasible for outside organizers to support. And lately it seems the way to get audiences to watch pro skating is to team up former elite figure skaters with celebrities from other areas of life and see how well these nonskaters can learn how to skate and to perform on skates.
What's more entertaining to watch? A dancer or actor who's a great performer and who has learned enough easy basic skating skills to translate that performance ability on ice? Or a shy jock who is highly accomplished at technical skating skills but has no interest in the audience?
If skating is all about entertaining audiences, why not find, or develop, good performers with just enough technical skating ability to support their performances and choreograph entertaining shows on ice? That's what the broadcasters aiming for maximum numbers of eyeballs would like, especially if there's also a competitive format to add drama to the show.
But if skating is about technical sport, aiming for faster higher stronger in its own terms, which for figure skating also means greatest control of the edges, then the rules and format can't favor the twisting and the dancing at the expense of the edge-based skills.
The Olympic movement will reject figure skating if it becomes too much about the dancing without technique. There were frequent threats from the Olympic side in the 1990s to get rid of ice dancing because it was too subjective to be a real sport. Officials and fans from other sports who aren't interested in arts might like to see skating be all about difficult tricks and not understand what the edges or the music have to do with anything.
So the ISU needs to balance demands from the jock audience and the artsy audience with the integrity of its own edge-based sport. And I would hope they would do more to encourage audiences to understand the edge techniques and not just be wowed by flashy tricks and dancing.
). We tend to like at the end to pick and appreciate the more subtle artistic skater because this means quality but if it wasnt for people like Joubert who have huge presentation and draw attention the first minute (and I think he has as much quality by the way), I wouldnt have the luxury to know Abott... neither GS probably.
It has gone for many fans this way, especially when you get zero info about fs around you. The recent years is the trend but how many people were thinking superirly about Savoie 5 years ago? (he is of my favs to watch on youtube)
) that even in CoP judges do the same as in 6.0 in pcs: If i gave this skater 7.25 then this one should get around 8.00, or with slight less transitions 7.00 etc..
I meant that human brain usually compares two things even without knowing it(like the two sticks out of ten), otherwise do really judges press delete and forget the previous performance? 
