Sorry for the long post -- I was away for a day and I'm trying to catch up.
I invented a 5-point clean-program bonus for the FP only because (sticking with MM's problem case) I would like to see audiences going from the final part of the event with a sense that justice was done, so to speak. Why 5 points? I thought the bonus should be round about the level of an easier triple jump, in order to be substantial, but not as much as a hard one, but maybe it should equal a flip or lutz. I am awarding it to anyone who got no deductions in the FP, as I'm defining clean as no falls. (That could certainly be debated as a lot of stepouts are ugly as heck and certainly detract from the overall effect, but like I said, I'm very rushed.)
By "deductions" do you mean no fall deductions? Does it apply to music or costume or long lift deductions as well?
Or do you also mean no negative GOE for any reason?
Would the 5-point bonus apply to the freeskating only? So a skater who fell twice in the SP but didn't fall in the LP would get the bonus, but a skater who skated the only clean program in the short and had one fall in the long would not?
How about smaller bonus for a clean short and a larger bonus for a clean long (2 and 3 points, respectively, or 3 and 5 points . . . might need to depend on the discipline and level of competition).
5 points seems like a reasonable size bonus for the current middle-to-high senior ladies' field. But the effects might be different at other levels.
E.g., among the elite senior men, maybe skater A does two clean quads and two clean triple axels but falls on two lesser triples and all level 4 elements. Skater B skates "clean" with one triple axel and one underrotated quad (< sign and average -1GOE), and easier spins and steps. Does B get the bonus? Even if he does, it might not be enough to make up for A's lead in base mark. Not even taking PCS into account.
On the other hand, for girls trying to get past the qual round at Junior Worlds, maybe Skater C lands one of each kind of triple up to lutz but falls on a second triple lutz: no bonus. Skater D does two triple sals, two triple toes, and a bunch of doubles but doesn't fall. If C is better than D in other ways besides jump content, the bonus might not make that much difference. But it does seem weird to give D a bonus equal in value to a jump she's not even capable of attempting.
Unless you think that the difference between falling once and not falling at all should be equal to the equivalent 0.5 in all five each program component for men and close to 0.75 for women (multiplied by the long program compnent factors of 2.0 and 1.6 respectively).
^ I think that the same effect could be achieved by giving 0 credit to an element ending in a fall. The designation on the protocol would be "element not completed." (Again the problem would be half-falls, hand down, etc.)
And what about falls that don't occur on jumps? Especially with step sequences (especially dance or pair step sequences where the fall occurs during a dance hold and the partner can quickly pull the fallen partner to his feet), the element doesn't always end with the fall and there may be some good stuff in the post-fall part of the element.
But there are already certain kinds of mistakes that invalidate complete elements, so we could decide that falls should be one of them. As is, single and double jumps and most non-jump elements end up with less than 1 point for the element if they earn -3 GOE (as is likely with a fall), so after the fall deduction they lose points. Just making the element worth nothing and not taking the 1.0 fall deduction would actually be more forgiving for these elements.
What about falls between elements? I think the whole point of fall deductions being subtracted from the total score rather than from elements was to penalize those as well. By putting the penalties back into the element scores only, that would leave only PCS as a place for judges to penalize these often "silly" types of falls.
I could live with that.
Without changing the rules, I also think that the judges can, and maybe do, give a "clean program bonus" in the program components. Choreography and musical interpretation are marred by falls, certainly.
But by how much often varies from one incident to another, let alone from one observer to another. So we'd have to accept that sometimes P's fall was more disruptive than Q's and deserved to be penalized more in the PCS, and that sometimes we thought Q's fall was disruptive but some of the judges thought that Q did a great job of maintaining connection to the music and audience and program theme while falling and recovering and didn't penalize Q at all in those components.
Under ordinal judging the job of the judge was quite simple. This skater was best, this skater second best, that one third. The complicated part – well, that was done by computer and usually was of little interest.
As others have mentioned (see below), the process wasn't really that simple and was subject to a lot of noise and variation depending in part on skate order, especially in the middle ranks of large fields.
The numbers presented -- one mark for technical merit and one for presentation -- look simple, and the single ordinal placement that they really represent look even simpler. So it's easy for outside observers to think that the process was simple. But really judges had to consider almost everything that both the judging panel and the tech panel now take into account and do their own weightings. Much of it was by overall gut feeling rather than adding up numbers.
I invite you to choose a competition for which you can find video of 18-24 long programs and score them all yourself according to everything you know about what should be rewarded as good skating and what should be penalized. Difficulty of the spins and steps does count. Jump rotations and takeoff edges and one-foot back outside landings do count. Transitions or in-betweens do count. Speed and edge quality and multidirectional skating count. Keep good notes, knowing that the referee might ask you why you put Skater X 5th when the panel as a whole put her 15th, or vice versa.
Not so simple after all.
Under the CoP it really is impossible for the average fan to know just what it is that the technical panels and judges do.
Under 6.0 it was really impossible for the average fan to know just what it was the judges do (i.e., all of the above and then some). But because the numbers looked simple, it was possible for fans to believe the process was a lot simpler than it really was. And the real process was all hidden.
Most fans don't really want to go to the trouble of learning what makes a level 3 spin or a +1 step sequence, but if they do want to the rules and guidelines are right there in black and white for them to see, as well as the actual decisions (results, not reasons) for each element. For those who
want to become educated fans, it's a lot easier to do so under IJS.
This skater deserved a 7.25 -- not a 7.00 and not a 7.50 -- in choreography because...um...
At that level of distinction, it comes down to individual judges' sense of the standard and there could be confounding effects such as skate order. If you think the skater deserves 7.0 or 7.5 but all the judges give 7.25, you're not wrong.
But if you want to know why this skater deserved approximately 7.25 and not 6.25 or 8.25, if you watch enough above-average, good, and very good performances you can get a sense for the differences between those different levels of accomplishment, same as you could get a sense under 6.0 of which skaters started out with presentation worthy of high, middle or low 5s or lower.
I think judges still do some ranking in the PCS. I think they view some skaters, like Patrick,as 9s and others, like Rachael, as 6s.
But when they give those scores, they're not saying Patrick is 3 points better than Rachael in each of these components. (Especially since Patrick and Rachael would never compete against each other.) They're saying Patrick meets or exceeds their standard for "superior" skills in those areas and Rachael is somewhere in the range of "above average" to "good."
If the overall skill level of two different skaters in the same event is that far apart, there's no need to compare them directly to each other, any more than under 6.0 a judge would look back at a skater he's awarded 5.6 or 5.3 for presentation and ask whether another skater was better or worse before awarding 5.9.
If the skaters were close in ability, then the judge needed to make a direct comparison under 6.0. Under IJS they don't need to, but it's probably good to make sure they're consistent in their use of the scale throughout the event (e.g., if they started marking high for the first few skaters, to stay high for the rest). And when marking Skater K, it might be meaningful to remember the marks already given to Skater J and think "slightly weaker on skating skills, so 0.25 lower than I gave J there, about the same on transitions, but significantly stronger on performance, choreo, and interp, so 0.5, 0.75, 1.0 higher on those."
These decisions aren't actually rankings, though, because the judge can't keep track of what the TES added up to -- they can make an effort to rank the PCS (in this case, making a clear decision to give K higher overall PCS than J) -- but they can't guarantee that base mark plus GOEs plus PCS might not put J ahead overall if you just added up that judge's column of scores.
It's easier said than done. The judges watch...what, 24 skaters? How would they remember skater #12 is better than #6, but not as good as #10. Skater #22 is better than 12, but almost the same as #8, yet worse than #4.....yeah, like it makes any sense. Like Dragonlady said, 6.0 doesn't make sense.
In practice I don't think it's quite as complicated, as you are only having to evaluate one skater at a time. (i.e. they don't have to remember anything because their placements for previous skaters are right in front of them; they only have to put the current skater above one other and/or below one other. Decisions are made on a real time basis for each athlete.)
Again, I invite you to try it. The first six skaters will be easy. The second six might offer some challenges in deciding which skaters in the first group to compare the current skater to, but it shouldn't be too hard. By the third and fourth groups, it can become all too easy to forget about earlier skaters who were close in general ability for different reasons. This will be even more true in an unseeded large group like a short program or qualifying round (or juvenile freeskate, since they only skate one program).
You need to make sure not to tie any of the skaters. Especially not by mistake because you forgot you'd already given those scores to someone else, or because you boxed yourself in with the numbers and it's too late to change the scores for earlier skaters to give yourself room.
Using the numbers properly to keep track of the rankings isn't really a skating-evaluation skill per se, but it was a skill that judges needed under 6.0 and that fans who only watch six skaters at a time don't need to worry about.
Probably the hardest thing for me to wrap my head around is how programs with such low technical content in the jumps are doing well. I'm speaking in particular of the ladies events, in which programs that would have likely not medaled in any major competition from 1992-2006 place quite well now. For the casual fan who has been following for years and doesn't understand transitions or skating skills, seeing jump content that Kristi Yamaguchi or Oksana Baiul could easily surpass might make them scrath their heads.
Well, they're doing well in relation to the field they're competing against. If they have to compete against skaters with stronger jump content and also stronger everything else, they wouldn't do so well.
I'm sure Yamaguchi with her 1992 skills packaged into a program designed to meet the 2012 rules could place quite well in the current field. (Not sure she could have medaled at 2010 Olympics, but probably a final group contender, comparable to Flatt's and Nagasu's results. The field is usually strongest in Olympic years.)
Baiul is probably not a good comparison. Yes, she could do five different triples but she had trouble with landing on one foot and on executing combinations, and she didn't really show (or have?) the skills to earn high levels in steps or high GOEs in spins. I think her PCS would have been all over the place, probably highest in Interp, or P/E for a good performance.
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