Competitive sports and activities are judged in different ways. Some lead themselves to face to face competition and so the soccer team wins that scores the most number of goals or the chess game is over when one player captures the king of the other.
Some competitive activities are judged and this is much easier when the participants are all doing the same activity such as a diving competition where every jackknife off the high dive is evaluated by the same standards. Competition is more difficult to evaluate when the competitors are trying to accomplish different things. This is the case in competitive stamp shows and in dog shows and is what has led to the sense of unfairness that pervades the evaluation of both.
Can a given mastiff really being a better example of its breed than a poodle can be of hers? What philatelists (and dog enthusiasts) do is establish arbitrary criteria that the exhibitors are then exhibiting against. A mastiff must be x inches tall and weigh y amount. And, arbitrary as it is, dog show judging is scientific compared to the standards that are used by philatelic judges. In essence, each competitive philatelic exhibit is judged against the imaginary perfect exhibit of its type-a standard that exists differently in each judges mind, based on his knowledge and philatelic experience. It is usually arbitrary and subjective and leads, first, to winners who just substantially duplicate the collections of previous winners, second, to the awe paid to the monetary value of competitive exhibits, and third, to rewarding exhibitors being politically active in the hobby so that they can “sell” their exhibits to judges behind the scene. It always was a bad system that rarely rewarded creativity and as stamp shows have gotten smaller and more infrequent, it hasn’t gotten any better.