JUDGING: IS ANONYMOUS THE SOLUTION?

Wednesday, 19 March 2008 18:22

JUDGING: IS ANONYMOUS THE SOLUTION?

One problem in judging – regardless if it is art or sport – is that competitors feel they must take lessons from the judges if they want to be marked up. Worse, many competitors feel that if they take some lessons and then stop, they will be marked down lower than they were before!

The new rules for judging ice skating now include the following:

            The ISU Membership strongly supports that Judges should not be named and identifiable so as to significantly reduce the risk of outside influence on Judges as well as enabling the evaluation of the Judges performances anonymously leaving no room for favouritism by the evaluating bodies.

Would this be a good system for ballroom dance competitions?

Re: JUDGING: IS ANONYMOUS THE SOLUTION?

Saturday, 12 April 2008 16:03

The problem is that many competitors know the event organizers or have contact in the sanctioning association , and are able to find from them  who the invited judges are.

This way you would end up with an elite minority who would have an unfair advantage, and could skip 'undesirable' comps leaving the rest of the field in disadvantage.