So is it your theory fsk8r that if they took the time to judge each move after looking at video tapes from several angles, judges would have more consistent scores?
I definitely don't understand the judging system, but I can do basic math.
If judges looked at every performance several times from several different views, and watched the critical elements in slow motion, zoomed in on skates and again on body elements as well, again from several different views - I guess it would take about 10 - 20 times as long to judge as to do the skate. That would be completely impractical for your average television viewer with a short attention span.
At less high profile competitions, maybe people would accept it (??), especially if everyone there could see all the videos too. But a major part of the cost of running a competition is the rental of the ice and facilities, which would go way up - so your entry fees would too.
Plus, the competitions would last more days, so you'd have to pay judges and maybe others for more travel expenses, again raising fees, and making it harder to rent the longer block of time for the competition.
And you'd need to recruit several times as many judges to accommodate the extra time. Maybe you could do that if they paid judges for their time - but that would raise your entry fees too.
And competitions, even minor ones, would need all that video equipment (some facilities would even need to heavy up the electrical capacity around the rink) - raising your fees again.
And BTW - the video people would have a lot more power, because the way they videoed skaters' performances, and what they selected as critical, would strongly influence scores, so people could still complain about bias.
I think your idea is really great. But the implementation is potentially a little complicated and expensive.
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From what I've heard, good choreographers and coaches do try to take angles of view for the judges into account when they create programs, to optimize scores (e.g., sometimes they
want to hide something - though of course those angles can be a little different at different facilities, especially the smaller ones.
There are lots of other factors that make judging potentially inconsistent too, no matter how competent and honest the judges. Like acoustics - in some cases there can be as much as 0.25 seconds time difference between the music the skater hears and what the judge hears - even more for the audience - that's a huge difference in judging the sync between skating and music, and much greater than the inconsistency at a land-dance performance on a small stage. And music with a fast beat can be very muddy and difficult to distinguish, for skaters, judges and/or audience in rinks that echo a lot.
Maybe we have to live with imperfection?