9C.4 Judging

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Comments about this discussion:

Started 23 Apr 10:49

There are a bunch of things that are not completely clear in this section.

1) Riders are ranked but multiple riders can be ranked at the same level. There's no mention how this impact their ranking points. If a judge ranks 2 people on second place should the next position then be 4th place (skipping 3rd place)? Also, if 2 people are ranked the same shouldn't they share the ranking points for that position (e.g. with 2 second places each would get 2.5 ranking points). There's a slight possibility for bias or favoritism, e.g. if a judge can't decide between two team mates and they both get the lower points.

2) It mentions that judges should judge skills by their difficulty but doesn't mention anything about the amount or variety of tricks. Taken at face value that would mean that one rider showing an extremely hard skill (say, handstand coasting) should be ranked higher than other riders showing more skills with a lower difficulty. There's also different styles being displayed and there's no discussion of how judges should consider that.

Comment 23 Apr 13:30

1. How it should work is that if two riders receive a rank of 2, the next rider below these to would receive a 4. We could add an example to 9C.4 "If two riders receive a rank of 2, the next rider below these to would receive a rank of 4." I think it would be too complicated to give them a ranking of 2.5 if they both were placed at second. This has rarely happened when tabulating rankings (at least in all the competitions I have judged and tabulated results), so with such little risk of bias, it might not be worth worrying about.

2. Variety does not matter, just difficulty and how many skills landed. If one rider lands only "handstand coast" and the other rider lands a 360 side, a 540 secret side, and 900 uni spin, I would rank the second rider higher. Considering the different styles being judged together comes into play with pairs judging, and pairing up a freestyler with a flat rider.

Comment 23 Apr 19:30

In my opinion, judges should never tie riders and it should not be allowed, which would alleviate this issue.

Comment 24 Apr 08:05

Couple of things:

How the judges note the rankings shouldn't matter as long as the tabulation is done correctly at the end. So if someone writes down 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5 whoever deals with the scores should figure it out. In freestyle, street and flatland there's a computer program doing the tabulation and the same could be made for X-style. Regardless how this is done it's not clear in the rules and it still allows judges to "bump" a rider up when two riders are tied as explained above.

If we can't agree on how to tabulate scores I would go with Scott's suggestion and disallow ties.

I'll open a new discussion about how to judge skills so we can keep this one strictly about how to tabulate scores

Comment 24 Apr 12:04

Disallowing ties would make things simpler and resolve the issue.

Comment 24 Apr 14:36

I agree with Scott ties shouldn't be allowed.

Comment 25 Apr 12:27

I also think that it would be the easiest and uncomplicated way to prohibit ties in judgement. From my own experience, I can say that I've never had a problem with making a clear order without ties. I don't see any advantages in allowing ties, so from my point of view we can ban them.