It used to amaze me on how people argue the competence of judges (now, I'm just used to it). Have you noticed that...
- there are rarely any threads praising judges.
- unjustice always occurs when someone's favorite corp scores slip and never when they jump up (and in turn, the low scoring judge is the villain).
- people act as if judging is a perfect science and that there is always an explanation on why a judge scored a group or groups poorly.
- there are endless arguments for or against trends (i.e. incremental scoring and slotting)
Judging IS NOT a perfect science. If it were, we would not need judges because everyone else could figure out the competition results on their own. Judges value things differently, therefore you will rarely see direct correlations between judges (trends). If by chance you do, there is a good chance that the groups are obviously at different levels (slotting). You also need to consider that scoring ranges can differ and that if you are looking for trends, you should look at trends by judge, not by competition (score jumping). Are there "bad" judges? Sure, but seldom do we see these judges stick around for very long. Are there "good" judge? Yup. How about some of you chiming in and telling us how they got it right? We don't know exactly what judges are thinking, so let's stick with expressing our own thoughts instead of trying to justify how someone else got it wrong.