Deductions Using a Consensus of the Panel

In the absence of a replay system, it may well be true that one judge's decision for the deduction to take on a given skater may sometimes be the one and only correct view of the situation.  In addition, when the judges podium stretches for 100 feet or more, the judges can have significantly different sightlines for the elements and may thus come to different conclusions for that reason.  Under these circumstances, having each judge assign their own individual deductions makes sense since it is difficult to determine what the one right decision is.

With replay, however, all the judges have one common view of the elements they can refer to, and no judge should be in the position of saying they had to give the skater the benefit of the doubt because they aren't sure what happened.  With replay, the consensus of the panel is the best estimate of the correct deduction to take from a statistical point of view, and is the approach that is fairest to all competitors as a whole.

Under the current 6.0 system the judges record their base marks and deductions on their worksheets, but turn in marks with deductions subtracted from the base marks.  The only impact this proposal has on the judges is that they would turn in both their base marks and deductions separately.

Under the current 6.0 system the accountants combine the two marks from each judge to determine the panel-wide place of each skater.  In a revised 6.0 system, the accountants would calculate the panel-wide score for each of the two marks, and the panel-wide deduction for each skater (by finding the median deduction from all the judges).  For each skater, the two panel-wide marks would be added and the panel-wide deduction subtracted.  Order of finish would be determined from this total mark