If someone simply decides to completely alter the implied harmonies of the original and use their own, then it doesn't involve merely understanding the chord progression of the original, but rather, how to use proper chord progressions and bass lines in a coherent way with the original melody, as well. Even though I talked about replication of the original, the above is mainly why I involved the interpretation aspect---because if you stray from the original (like if you kept the melody and wrote everything else as new), you have less of a concrete reference for the harmonic structure and a greater difficulty in formulating a proper one, if that's not your strength.
That's definitely your intention at least, sure, and I agree. However, if the point of the checklist was to provide specific bullet points, it could be pretty long; imagine if everything on the checklist was split into separate, specific points.
(Hence, the first post states that it lists presumably common/generalized issues, rather than particularly specific ones, and acts as a "supplement to personal, specific feedback".)
I'm not against including what you have, as you know, but my intention was to say that I would rather they be more general phrasings to be elaborated upon, so those who don't know music theory well have a clue of what the bullet point even says without having to look up difficult terms. It gives the flexibility for explanation in a way with which they are most comfortable.
Again, I think the checklist is meant to be more general, and the reviewer can elaborate however he or she sees fit; if the issue does happen to be bad counterpoint, then that can be mentioned. If the reviewer doesn't even notice it, or doesn't use that keyword but still describes its principles, or doesn't even understand what it is and doesn't say anything about it, I think that's forgivable, because it could be too minor or too complex of an issue in the big picture. It would be an oversight to be sure, but in the long run, realistically, who's going to notice it? The more attuned people.
Well, one of the qualifications to be a judge was that you 'don't have to know music theory', but you do have to be able to articulate your observations to a comprehensible extent. Because of that, yeah, some judges might not notice some of these issues, but again, depending on the remix/song, it could just be too minor to matter in the big picture or too complex to notice. In short, "it happens... oops".
Just for the record, I don't think proper melody/harmony sensibilities are subjective, but it might be treated as such every now and then. Lastly, I'm not against these being on the checklist; I would just rather they be rephrased to be more generalized so that they're more "accessible" to the typical reviewer, and that's what I aimed to do in my previous post.