I am probably going to echo the others above when I say that this is far weaker than your previous article(s? I am grouping your SCG Open tournament report in here, but not sure if you have released that yet. I enjoyed it immensely). Dealing with your own disillusionment is a fantastic topic, attacking judges' raison d'être because the system isn't perfect and it burned you a couple of times is not such a satisfying one. While I enjoy your writing voice a lot, I can see how you could come across as needlessly abrasive and unhelpful here.
A lot of your issues seems to come down to this simple split. Rules of the game and integrity of the game. Adjudicating on the former is easy, there is huge set-in-stone comprehensive rules document out there that does it. Adjudicating the latter is where you can end up in all sorts of hot water, as it involves subjective judgements based upon having to deal with people. Given the judge assessment process, most judges are very good at dealing with rules, but there is far less emphasis on how to negotiate dealing with people. Of the extensive Judge Level requirements, it seems that handling other people (who aren't judges, the Judge levels place a frankly ridiculous emphasis on dealings with other judges) doesn't get any emphasis before Level 3 excepting a single dot point at level 2, which reads 'Must show diplomacy with players, judges and TOs', clearly equally important as knowing the deck-check procedure.
Your article seems to spend a great amount of verbal energy entertaining sociological theories as to why exactly the judges you have dealt with struggle to meet your standards on this latter issue, and perhaps too little on emphasising what perhaps should have been your key point; perhaps we put way too much emphasis on the technical rules of the game when we consider the integrity of the game. You seem to have been dancing around this late in your piece, when you are comparing completely disparate actions which carry the same penalty. Forgetting to announce a Dark Confidant trigger when you have 28 life and lethal on board does not affect the integrity of the game. Adding cards to your sealed deck does. Forgetting to reveal a morph when it gets bounced to your hand doesn't affect the integrity of the game, you just go, 'oh, sorry, it was this guy' and take your warning.
I mean, obviously if people are consistently making 'sloppy mistakes' when it happens to benefit them, then perhaps you have something to worry about, but that is what the warning system (and unfortunately it seems, good judgement) is for. I feel that far more game losses are awarded for someone being distracted for a moment and making an easily reversible technical error than for things which legitimately affect the integrity of the game.
