Vince RnQ
is Blowin Smoke!
I get what you are saying.
Question is do you want consistent scores or scores that best represent what the population thinks of your Que?
What punishment is fitting for some one who gives out 10.1% more nines? Retraining is punishment in lipstick.
I understand what you're driving and I agree that we don't want everything to be vanilla, so to speak. We need diversity in our judges just as we need diversity in our cooks.
I have seen a growing trend in the last few years where contests have the lowest scoring teams in each category averaging a score of 777 (140.000) or higher. How much sense does that make? Just as an example, the contest last weekend in Pleasant Hill, MO had 74 teams and only 4 entries out of the 296 possible were scored below the 140 point mark and one of those four was a DQ. So, 3 out of 295 entries were below the 140 point mark in a 74 team field. I think there were some mighty generous judges out there that day.
What I'm trying to say is that a judge who only uses a 7, 8 or 9 is just as bad as a judge who only uses a 5, 6 or 7. Both situations need to be addressed. By tracking, they can identify those who are always in the extreme and do something about it.
If you want to call retraining punishment in lipstick, that's OK with me. I think judges who are always at the extremes have no place in the sport and can dish out a form of punishment that has no lipstick to it at all. While judges do have some expenses involved in pursuing their passion, it doesn't compare to the expenses of the teams and everything that can possibly be done to have the best trained judges in the tent should be done.
Keep in mind that I am a CBJ as well as a cook and I think both deciplines take a lot of skill to master.