Comment Cards-Mandatory?
 

In lou of the previous thread on Judges Scoring, I was wanting to see if the powers at be and any comments from the Brethren would agree or disagree.

Personally I feel that an excellent way of us competitive cooks getting better is having an outside source, such as the judges, comment on our food, hence comment cards. I know that the Reps tell the judges to do comment cards, but in my 3 yrs of competing I have only had 1 comment card, which was well deserved.

So here is the question, if a team receives a score of 6 or lower should a comment card be mandatory?

We put alot of money, time, and effort into our cooks, so the least we could get is a comment card on why the score was 6 or lower. Agree?

This is post is not in a negative or mean way just a suggestion to help us get better.

That would be great, but how many judges would score something up just so they don't have to fill out a comment card?

True, I guess its a win win :grin:

Anything lower than a 6 and I will fill out a comment card, not for a 6 though.

This has been proposed, just as you wrote it, and the reply back was, "Well, if we do that then judges will never give scores lower than 6 anymore."

The reality is that this will never happen because KCBS does not have the desire or the will to make it happen. The current mindset seems to be to dumb down the process (i.e. revised pork rule).

I wouldn't have a problem mandating that judges fill out a comment card on each entry regardless of score. They have thirty minutes between turn-ins, thats five minutes for each piece they sampled. It wouldn't take 30 seconds each. I think a judge should be able to articulate what they liked or didn't like about an entry. I consistantly do more comment cards than everyone at my table combined. Feedback makes for better cooks.

That's 'cause you're a COOK! :hungry:

They really don't have 30 minutes - I've seen tables get food as late as 15 minutes into the judging period.
<broken record mode>
It's not a comment card issue - it's a lack of quantifiable standards issue
</broken record mode>

Personally, I always give a comment card on anything 6 or below, and even sometimes on a 7 if I have time.

Judges DO NOT get 5 minutes per sample as indicated above!!! It is common to see a table not get their boxes until the first table is almost done scoring.
Usually judges get about 1-2 minutes to: pick up a sample, pull all the parsley off so it doesn't effect the taste, bite, think/chew, bite again on a different side of the thigh/rib or a different type of meat in the same box, wipe off their hands and mouths, write down their scores, eat a small piece of cracker and take a drink of water before starting over again with the next sample. Believe it or not (cooks), judges don't have 5 minutes for each sample!
I FIRMLY believe that judging could be improved immensely by having the judges write down on the score cards WHY they gave each sample the score they did. This would be for EACH and EVERY entry! Of course, this means that turn-in times would need to be extended to at least 45 minutes between instead of 30. But would be actual useful information for the teams and would make the judges think more about the score and why they gave what they did.

Feed back would be great, even for good scores, but I would be satisfied with cards for 7's or less. We don't get many 7's but they will kill a chance at a win and it would be nice to know why a judge felt it deserved a 7. Maybe it was just a bad piece of meat that judge got, but I guarantee, a team will fret over a 7 for a long time trying to figure out what went wrong and maybe nothing did.

Our last comp, we had, if I recall exactly, ten 9's and the rest 8's on chicken, except for one judge that gave all 7's. Knowing why that judge felt it deserved only 7's would help to know if we need to change anything or what exactly the issue was.

I feel the mandatory-card trigger should be a score of 5. If 6 is "average", then if you have determined an entry is below average you'd better be able to come up with two to five words as to WHY it's below average.

Make it even easier -- put checkboxes for common issues like "too salty", "dry", "tough", whatever.

The time issue is a claim without merit. My son is a CBJ and has served at a contest where he judged, was table captain AND had time to generate relevant comment cards when merited. If boxes aren't getting back to the tables in a timely manner, I'd be looking squarely at the reps overseeing the sorting/renumbering of boxes.

Ramona and I did Vegas last year and had the rep complain that we were doing too many cards. I did them for just about every entry. some were statements like 'under done' others were 'great job'.

the GBA scoring system goes from 7 to 10 in each of the 3 criteria. A comment card is mandatory for any 7 or 8. Yes, there will be some judges who will not score low to avoid filling out comment cards. IMHO, the value of the comment cards outweighs the few judges who score up just to avoid writing a card. Judges are also encouraged to give "good" comment cards also. I do the scoring at a lot of GBA contests. There will normally be between 5-6 comment card for each of the three meats.

How much time can it possibly take to write "Your chicken was too salty"? I don't see that as a valid argument against comment cards.

Why not require comment cards period? Any judge should be able to justify a 9 or a 6 or a 3.