Seems to me that a lot of people are expressing concerns here, and rightly or wrongly, I'm thinking that all comments and expressions of concern should be considered and judged with an open mind, and if any of the aforementioned concerns have merit, I think that the FAI would benefit from listening, and responding, in some sort of favorable manner. If not, then pattern flying as a sport can only suffer as a result.

Taken to an extreme, there might even be a risk that the World Championships would end up being more of a regional championship than a world championship, and that competing championships would sprout up in other parts of the world. We could maybe find ourselves with a European championship, an Asian championship, and an Americas championship, with different sets of rules, and styles for each region. I can't imagine that the FAI would welcome any of this, and consequently I would expect them to be highly motivated to address concerns, and make changes if needed.

Given this, and without making any judgments as to merit, I see the following concerns being raised:

1/.. Inconsistent interpretation of the FAI rulebook
2/.. Inconsistent judging of maneuvers from pilot to pilot.
3/.. Regional bias
4/.. Inconsistent standards for participating judges
5/.. A system that encourages judges to try and anticipate how other judges are going to score a pilot and/or a maneuver.
6/.. No checks and balances that watch for judging bias

There's probably more stuff, but I'm too lazy to go back and read every post. Anyway, my point is that rather than debate whether any of this stuff is true or not, in the interests of maintaing and adding credibility to the sport, why don't we try to come up with some ideas that would mitigate each of these concerns without considering whether they are right or wrong.