2015 Skate Canada Mens Free Skate

CanadianSkaterGuy said:

And different strokes for different folks. I think facial expressions are certainly easier to execute than clean quads, and figure skating is a sport at the end of the day, so personally I would take the team with the harder elements executed cleanly over the skater with easier elements with better facial expressions (which is subjective anyways). Same in ice dance; I prefer teams with greater content and difficulty than those with over the top facial expressions and dramatic histrionics (a la winning dance teams in the 90s).

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THIS.:gclap:

Meoima said:

I have the feeling you tend think that judges are absolute, or at least that's my feelings so sorry if it's not the case.

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No, it definitely is not the case! I've said so many times.

I just don't cry "wolf!"... if I don't see any wolf...

gsyzf said:

So my question for Jace93 and YesWay is:

Do you think quality and difficulty should be equally rewarded or should one outweight another if the judging is fair?

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Its irrelevant to what we saw at SC.

The GoE bullet points are tick boxes.
As you've said, some of them can be considered as quality tick boxes, or difficulty tick boxes.
Right now, skaters can tick the "quality" boxes, or the "difficulty" boxes, or any combination of either/both to gain points.
None of the tickboxes outweigh any of the others, much as you'd like them to.
That is what we have. That is what we had at SC.

Earlier, you invented your own weighting system for GoE bullet points, that doesn't exist in the rules, but suits your agenda... then you decided that the judges are using your weigthing system... then when the scores at SC didn't fit with your weighting, you took it to mean that there was GoE overscoring. When in fact all it meant was, the judges don't use your weighting system after all.

And once again, you are seeking to change the rules or add a new interpretation, to suit your agenda.
This is actually fine, and even a worthy pursuit...
But changing the rules now doesn't prove GoE overscoring at SC... and it never can, after the event.

YesWay said:

Its irrelevant to what we saw at SC.

The GoE bullet points are tick boxes.
As you've said, some of them can be considered as quality tick boxes, or difficulty tick boxes.
Right now, skaters can tick the "quality" boxes, or the "difficulty" boxes, or any combination of either/both to gain points.
None of the tickboxes outweigh any of the others, much as you'd like them to.
That is what we have. That is what we had at SC.

Earlier, you invented your own weighting system for GoE bullet points, that doesn't exist in the rules, but suits your agenda... then you decided that the judges are using your weigthing system... then when the scores at SC didn't fit with your weighting, you took it to mean that there was GoE overscoring. When in fact all it meant was, the judges don't use your weighting system after all.

And once again, you are seeking to change the rules or add a new interpretation, to suit your agenda.
This is actually fine, and even a worthy pursuit...
But changing the rules now doesn't prove GoE overscoring at SC... and it never can, after the event.

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What is fair judging in your opinion? Is following the rules really fair judging? What if the rules are unfair to begin with? What if the rules are applied inconsistently that gives someone an unfair advantage?

The rules are designed by humans, with an intention to achieve certain goals.

For any rule/law makers, the questions they need to consider when designing any rules are:

What goals do they want to achieve with the rules?

How should they design/apply the rules so that give the agents (athletes in this case) the correct incentives to move in the direction they would like to see?

What are your answers to these questions?

If you never think about these questions or think these questions are irrelevant and that simply following the rules is fair to everybody, then you will never understand why people question the judging (it's a lot of people that question the judging, not just me) and there is no need for further disucssion.

The ISU wants to reward programs that have both difficulty and quality. But the reality is there is a tradeoff between difficulty and quality. Going for more difficult tech will lower the quality of execution and going for easier tech will raise the quality of execution, everything else equal. So if you reward difficulty too much, skaters will go for quantity(difficulty) and ditch quality. If you reward quality too much, skaters will do easy tech in order to achieve high quality of execution. So if you want skaters to have both difficulty and quality, then difficulty and quality must be rewarded equally (to give the right incentives for the skaters and the reward should be proportional to the risk taken).

So the rules/judging should be designed/applied in such a way so that:
high difficulty (high risk) + high quality > high difficulty (high risk) + low quality = low difficulty (low risk)+high quality >low difficulty (low risk) + low quality.

If somehow a low difficulty, high quality element scores equal or higher than a high difficulty, high quality element, then either the rules are faulty/unfair to begin with, or the rules are applied inconsistently/unfairly. Then, it's very natural that people will question the judging.

In terms of applying the bullet points, the bullet points are guidelines. Judges apply the bullet points in a way they believe is fair rather than strictly checking off the bullet points. In your mind, should high quality+high risk get the same reward as high quality+low risk?

Although preceding steps/entries is only one bullet point, there is a difference between the difficulty of steps/entries that different skaters do. Should the preceding steps/entries that are twice as difficult check only 1 bullet point, the same as an easy preceding steps/entries or should they check 2 bullet points because it is twice as difficult? Why should a skater do more difficult steps/entries if doing easy step/entries get the same reward? Should jumps that cover twice the distance (higher risk in the air) check only 1 bullet point, the same as a jump that cover half the distance (lower risk)? In judges' mind (some judges, probably not all judges), difficult steps/entries are worth more than just 1 bullet points, and big jumps are worth more than just one bullet points. They do have a reason for that.

IMO, bullet points like good extension on landing and effortless throughout are just there to allow judges to reward whoever they like because those two bullet points really depend on judges' aesthetics and personal perferences.

PS: If you don't think the questions I asked above are important or relevant to the discussion, please do not reply to my post. There is no need for further discussion.

gsyzf said:

If you never think about these questions or think these questions are irrelevant and that simply following the rules is fair to everybody, then you will never understand why people question the judging (it's a lot of people that question the judging, not just me) and there is no need for further disucssion.

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It's not that I never think about such things.

I responded to your earlier posts because you thought Chan was overscored on GoE, and I disagreed: On this occasion, I thought the rules for GoE as they are right now were applied correctly, appropriately and fairly to Chan's performance. That's all.

If you want to talk about whether the rules are fair in the first place, changing/expanding the rules or how they are used, rebalancing between difficulty and quality etc... like I said, that's a worthy pursuit, but this (Skate Canada) thread is not the place to do it. There are other threads that already discuss such things, or you could start a new one for specific aspects.

So yeah... I guess this:

gsyzf said:

PS: If you don't think the questions I asked above are important or relevant to the discussion, please do not reply to my post. There is no need for further discussion.

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...except I don't say such things are not important, just I don't see them as relevant to this discussion (Skate Canada).