I didn't think he meant it like that - I thought he meant Robin as head judge had given guidance on how to score, i.e. what deserved a 4.5, what deserved a 5.0, so there's some consistency across the board (so that someone's idea of a 6.0 isn't someone else's idea of a 2.0.) Although the judging system here is flawed anyway - you can see it in comparing the skating judges points (Nicky, Karen and Robin) with the theatrical judges (Jason and Ruthie).

Nicky has been commentating on figure skating Eurosport on the Olympics/Worlds and Euros for years (and observed all the corruption in the judging), and totally has my respect. He's not going to give Ray a 5.0 because Robin told him so. I think its more likely that Robin briefed beforehand them saying you need to achieve x, y and z to deserve a 4.0, 4.5, 5.0, but in the end it's down to the individuals themselves to mark it as they will.

Having said that, Nicky after all those years of commentating should have known better to give Melinda a 4.5 so early on without leaving room for anyone else!

I blame the format. The 6.0 system is just rubbish! It's why competitive skating has moved on from that!

I wonder if the judges see the final dress rehearsal and have, in their minds, put the skaters in some sort of order, so that when the first pair skate, they have an idea of what to expect and where to pitch the first set of marks. Then along comes say Melinda, who does better than expected so they (or in this case Nicky) had to give her a higher mark than he'd originally thought, which then makes all his other marks seem a bit odd.

I think it all evens out anyway, because Ruthie and Jason are more consistent with their voting.

But only because Ruthie and Jason can only vote on presentation and theatricality. It's tougher for Robin, Karen and Nicky to mark on both technical content and presentation when the levels of skating are so spread out. How do you rank an easy routine that's performed very cleanly and vibrantly, against one that has more difficulty but has mistakes and is more lacklustre?

You're probably right about rehearsals affecting the resulting mark - it's certainly always been a problem in amateur competitions. :P

Apparnetly they try not to see much of the rehearsals, I've heard both Robin, Nicky and Jason say that.
It is very hard to mark someone when you dont know whats coming after them and especially with such a lack of scoring options, as theres less contestants it will get easier they are trying to get the right positions on the score board at the moment over marks. I agree with the cap at this point though, giving it now would to some degree devalue the six (cos what would you give for the final performance and also youd have to give someone a 6 then for reaching rays standard in week 3 which would be odd) and there would be nowhere to go regards improvement. I can understand the complaints about the .5 difference but if you marked in exact comparison Ray would be a 5, (which is very good at this stage of the comp its better than chris and suzi were getting which is fair enough) and the others would have to start at about 1 and go down to minus 5.

Robin has the right idea by capping it, otherwise everyone would be complaining about it being like SCD, flinging top marks all over the place! Still, there's always something to complain about, they'll never get it right according to DS.

DOI is not using the 6.0 system that figure skating used to use.

DOI does not have separate technical / requires vs presentation marks.

DOI also doesn't use ordinals.

The actual 6.0 system with ordinals can be tricky for viewers to follow and can have some odd consequences, but imo it would be better than what DOI uses and would go a fair way towards solving the problem of over-/under-marking, because all that would matter from each judge is the order in which his or her marks put the skaters.

(DOI currently does something like that with the judge's marks, but only after they're added together, which makes the actual mark values matter more.)

The "code of points" system now used in figure skating would be too unwieldy for DOI, imo.

Thanks, I watch competitive figure skating and realise all of that!

I only meant it in the limited way the 6.0 system is used to rank skaters.

The complaints I'm reading on this board are exactly the same ones you used to get with the 6.0 system in competitions, i.e. judges ranking skaters too closely or too highly and finding they hadn't left any room for others.

And it's made worse here by the fact that you only have 0.5 differentials.

Rubbish system then, made even more rubbish now.

One problem this year is that if they give Ray a 5.0, then to show how much better he is than the others, no one else could get more than 3.5.

You cant give a 6 in week 3 - where do you go from there.

I know what you mean. It might not be what the audience wants, but the judges should mark what they see - just like they would in a real skating competition with loads of pairs where the less able couples would have much lower marks than the top couples.

They now have some measure of each couple and with Todd at one end of the scale and Ray at the other they've got a benchmark. All they have to do is stick to it (doubt if Nicky can manage that though!).

I wish they would have two sets of scores - which is how it is done with competitive Ice Dance. A score out of 6.0 for the technical elements and a score out of 6.0 for the presentation.

That would give the judges much more flexibility to offer wide ranging scores. With so many competitors at this stage, it's really hard to be able to seperate them with so few points on offer.

I agree you can't give a 6 in week three. The judges have to lower their scores in general to give them the scope they need. They need to do this quickly too as couples look to improve on their score from the previous week.

They've lower the scores in genral the last two years which is good, they basically said before the the 2008 series started that the scores had been two high at the beginning of the previous series and that it became difficult, its been more or less policy the last two years as they've no where to go with it.
Also if they were marking in direct comparison Ray would get 5 and everyone else would start around 2, and we'd almost have to go to minus scoring to keep it fair.
To be honest though i can see the arguments for the two marks and it would make the scoring far more accurate and it would reflect the performances more properly it would be far too serious for a light entertainment show. It would make things far more tedious for the public and the show would be longer, and we'd still have controversy and people disagreeing and itd be boring to watch. Its more about entertainment than getting the marks exactly right, if we had the olympic system itd kill the show a bit, itd maker things too serious I think.

THe scoring on DOI has become increasingly daft. At this stage I doubt many of them deserved more then about 3.5

As Ruthie said if you give 4's & 5's at this stage where do you go.

The judges seem to be not all following the Voting arrangment. With Ruthie & Jason giving realistic marks

Even Ray I suspect should have got no more than 4.5

I didn't quite get Nicky's comment.

Surely they were being marked on what they did, and maybe also how much they'd improved and entertained. You can't mark in relation to other skaters, or Ray would have got 6's across the board and Todd nothing, or maybe 1.
Nicky thought that Coleen deserved a 4.5 for what she did, and Ray deserved a 5 for what he did.

Maybe they should give two scores - one for technicality, and one for improvement/entertainment?

I thought Jeremy was hideously under-marked. his performance was better than Colleen's in terms of actual technical skating and should have got 3.5s and 4s. The judges clearly didn't like him as he got 16.5 when he should have had at least 18.5 which would have probably saved him.
I think it's clear they have their favourites already - Salmon being one, for example.

Quite! The country is nearly bankrupt, we are fighting wars all over the place, thousands dying in Africa and not only does someone ring the DM about DOI but they are putting it on their front page? And if they have to, shouldnt it have been there this morning? It will be history by the time it gets there.

I thought Nicky was saying Robin had said it was too early to be giving perfect marks at this stage of the competition otherwise there's nothing to aspire to and it seems as though there's no room for improvement. If that's the case then Robin's right. After all, how many people complained about the overmarking on the latest series of SCD?

That is what I assumed he meant by Robin's 'directive'.

The judges really should give marks which reflect how good at skating each celeb is, and not what a good effort they gave it. They cannot be scoring on entertainment or Todd would have got 6's!! Giving Colleen a 4.5 was ridiculous, she didn't have control of her skates, and even worse was to mark her just 0.5 behind Ray, who had control and was completely secure in all his moves. Melinda also got a 4.5 although she skated better than Colleen.

Nicky has judged before and that is why I am amazed at his scores. The fact that he can't get a grasp of the fact that giving a 6.0 means the performance is 'perfect' and so in his eyes Coleen was a mere 1.5 off being perfect.

Everybody boos Jason, but at least he does have some perspective in his scores. Although he overmarked Todd ....... he should have got no more than 0.5.

Jason's usually spot-on in the substance of what he says - it's the manner in which he says it that people have problems with.

Robin usually says exactly the same thing as Jason, he just doesn't express himself in quite the same way.

I think Robin is scoring the way the tend to do in Ice Dance competition.

That is - the judges score but with leeway top and bottom because they know better skaters are still to come and they have to leave room to score them higher.

Never liked that method - I think it should be scored on the premise that they've never watched them before and everything that went before should be discarded and they score as if they were a new couple.

In a nutshell - they're overscoring people like C Nolan and M Messenger - that's the problem!

I think they mark depending on the choreography, so that this week Ray's performance with the choreography he was given was worth a 5, it is possible that next week he may not perform the new choreography so well and be given less than 5 and I assume this would apply to all the skaters. As the skaters are all given choreography to suit their abilities, it is quite possible that the judges (apart from Ruth and Jason) felt that Melissa deserved good marks for the way she performed her choreographed dance. I don't think they are marking each skater against the other skaters as happens in Professional competitions (well I think it does I have no idea really).

Figure skating marking is much more about position than actual scores, so the first skater gets a mid range score and everyone else is either better or worse and is scored accordingly. The actual numbers aren't important, all that matters is the relative position. This doesn't translate particularly well to Dancing on Ice, but that's what Nicky is trying ot achieve, he's made a number of comments to the effect that someone was worse than someone else, so he can't give them a better score as he has already given the better person such and such.

The problem is made worse by only scoring in 0.5 increments, if they could make in 0.1 increments then they would have much more room to fit everyone in. Currently anything under a 3 is considered a 'very bad' score, and everything above 4.5 is 'wow, that was a great score', which really only gives, 3, 3.5 or 4 as middle of the road scores, yet 7 or 8 of the 12 skaters will be doing a middle of the pack sort of skate.

I think that looks more like what they are doing. Simple done well = 4, difficult well =5.

That of course though depends on getting the choreography and its increasing difficulty right for the contestant. This week everyone got something they could do apart from Todd (whose limits are too low) and Zoe who got something she couldn't do when it was easily removed from the routine. You have to wonder how well they could guage routines for people and how easily they can adapt routines when they have 11 people to choreograph. If DOI doesn't let the pros do the choreography it makes it even more difficult to match people to ability even if it should avoid anyone ending up with a weaker choreographer.