Scoring System
Over the years it has become obvious the need for a transparent and fair scoring system. To this effect, the World Ballet Competition has developed its own real-time scoring system that ensures both transparency and fairness. This article goes over some of the features and how it is being used to ensure transparency in the scoring process. The screen shots included in this article are actual screen shots taken from the live system.
The Judging Panel
There are eight judges for each round that include seven voting members and a jury president. Each of these judges is provided with a scoring tablet that is controlled by the scoring system. When a competitor enters the stage, the judge is presented with two score cards, one for artistic and one for technical merits, and in case of a choreography entry a third that is judged separately.
At this time, the competitor information is also displayed on the overhead projection screen (see under transparency) in the auditorium and the live video broadcast.
ONCE SCORES ARE ENTERED:
Once a score has been selected, the judge confirms it and it is permanently captured into a database where it cannot be altered:
Conflicts of Interest Handling: Should there be any conflicts of interest (NOT otherwise known before hand, for example the judge recognizes the competitor and did not know that the competitor is there before hand), the judge can remove themselves from the voting pool and the jury president is asked to cast the score.
Clarification of rules or possible infringement on rules of the competition: The judge, who suspects that a rule of the competition has been broken or needs further clarification on the rules, will hit the "STOP VOTING FOR JURRY DELIBERATION" button on their screen. At this time, all scores captured will be dumped and scoring will be stopped until the jury can deliberate on possible penalties or provide guidance on the applicable rules and policies as published on the competition's website. Once the deliberation is complete, the jury president releases the deliberation and the judging panel is allowed to enter the scores. This option is very rarely used as 99% of conflicts are known before hand and the judges with conflicting interests ARE NOT allowed to score the entire category.
Transparency of the Scoring Process
While the competitor is on stage, the basic information about the competitor is displayed:
The country and competitor number is also displayed on the live Internet broadcast.
Once all scores have been entered: the scores are displayed on the overhead projector and the Internet video broadcast in real-time
To maintain fairness, the lowest and the highest scores (one of each) are automatically dropped, marked in red and the mean score is calculated from the remaining scores (in green). The blue "N" is the non-voting jury member (the jury president or abstaining judge). This process ensures that no one judge can influence the final score of the competitor one way or another.
AFTER THE ROUND:
To ensure integrity, scores of each judge for each competitor as well as the round scores are printed out in four copies:
a copy for the Jury President
a copy for the Competition Administration
a copy for the Technical Team (will be posted online on the day of)
a copy that is immediately displayed backstage for the competitors and coaches
Furthermore, in between the rounds the round scores are also displayed in the theater and on the Internet Live Broadcast.