kewms

I think plenty of judo people would disagree with you about the compromises that judo has made.

I agree, though, that aikido lacks a success metric. Just look at the threads here, and how often it turns out that people disagree because they are pursuing fundamentally different goals.

Which goes back to my original point. Aikido is a very big tent. At one extreme you have people who are so allergic to any kind of conflict that you wonder why they are studying a martial art at all. At the other, you have people who will tear your arm off and beat you with it. Both extremes call what they do "aikido," and scoff at the other extreme. Very few generalizations will apply to both extremes.

Katherine