First step to a new world of judging

[freestyle2music]

For the first time judges stepped on their soapbox to tell the world that judging at Aachen wasn't very good nor consistance.

Mrs. Katherine Wüst was the spokes(wo)man and because she is also a member of the Dressage Task Force this could be a whole new start.

[carovet]

is there an interview we can see/read?

[Fixerupper]

:eek: next the sky will fall!!

[slc2]

"next the sky will fall"

Oh look, it's national dump on the judges day at COH, like every day. When will people here realize the judges are human beings and most of them are honest decent people working very hard to try to judge well. For them to come forward and say lets work on this is great. This knee jerk reaction here that everyone in the FEI and all the judges are inhuman morons is so tiresome. Fruther, how in the world would this improve the problem? How is it constructive? It is just shutting down communication and achieving nothing.

[freestyle2music]

I agree with SLC2, because a fresh wind is blowing, because I can remember that after HongKong, Withages stated that the judging was perfect. And at least after Aachen the judges seem to have crawled out of their ivory tower, and are aware that there is still much work to be done.

On the other hand I really wonder if you can solve the problem of nationalistic judging, first starter last starter, namejudging etc... without turning around the whole system. In a recent analyse of many thousands of competition scores we still could read that almost 30% of the winners where decided by the score of only one of the five judge.

When we see the scores of the last two big competitions, it seems that the Dutch judges at least have solved the problem of nationalistic judging :D

Theo

[slc2]

How is it if Gary Rockwell gives a much higher score for a movement when other judges give a much lower score and neither Rockwell or the other judge is from the country of the horse/rider, how is that nationalism? That was how Rockwell felt it should be scored and he was just as right as the other judges, with just as good a rationale. The judge has to interpret the rules and apply them to the situation at hand, just as a driver in a car can be trained, but each turn is a little different and requires different judgement. Not all discrepancies in judging are wrong/bad/nationalism.

That is just the matter of not having enough dialogue and discussion among the judges, who need to hear from other judges. And how are the Dutch judges free from problems and everyone else is not?

I am delighted that the judge spoke up and said we can do this even better, that is a good thing. Feedback is how things improve, now there is an effort to allow this and that is good. They are trying. Why slap them down?

Would we even know something good if it came up and bit us on the butt? Come on.

[Plantagenet]

we had a computer real time evaluating the scores for each movement and any score that was more than 2 standard deviations different from the other judges was discarded for that movement?

I'm assuming we could insert the average score for the other 4 judges as the default score for the movement by the outlying judge.

that way we can keep 5 judges and don't have to completely throw out a judge's score.

I'm not sure about the math, and those of you more gifted in their math skills may feel free to tell me it won't work at all!

[slc2]

I would never want that to happen, ever. It is VERY important to hear different opinions expressed in the scoring. Without that we never have any chance of improving judging, we will be mired in doing the same thing over and over and over and our judges will be robots, not thinking, feeling horse trainers sharing their experience. Judging develops and changes just like any endeavor, and the diseenting opinion the 'standard deviation' may be the most important score of all 5 in improving judging. The one judge who speaks up and says 'I disagree' should be listened to, not penalized, s/he may have a very good reason and may be the one who changes judging for the better.

Almost everyone here complains the judges don't 'use the full range of marks', don't penalize ENOUGH your pet peeves, you're going to institutionalize that.

How does that fit in with making them all try to guess what score to kowtow to, instead of speaking the truth about what they see? The 'standard deviation' will ALWAYS penalize the judge who speaks out, and he may very well have something very important to say.

Iw ant the judges to be on the same page, free of bias for or against customers ( i actually think this sort of thing is even more a problem than nationalism) or team members, but understand each other. The 'hardass' judge who scores lower AND the one who rewards more, both must be heard. You idea will turn judges into toadying conformists.

I NEVER want them to be trained to be in lockstep. That is SO WRONG on so many levels.

[Fixerupper]

Take a joke... why don't you?

Just like in real life there are lots of judges who are honestly out there judging what they see and trying to help improve the sport...there are others that are in it for themselves and/or biased for a number of reasons and a few who shouldn't be doing it at all.

I have 2 points to make -

- judging at the very top has been very 'clique'y...for quite some time...many judges were willing to toe the 'party line' to get ahead. When the 'party line' changes there will be some confusion as a result.

- because of the 'old' system there are a number of judges who got very little opportunity to play in the big leagues or got parachuted in with limited exposure to real international competition.

When you break eggs...it gets a bit messy before you get the omlette.