Reading and editing a scorecard

Clicking a scorecard's title on the Review Queue — or Open and edit scorecard in its row menu — slides a panel in from the right, over the queue. It holds the whole scorecard as it was filed: every answer, the written feedback, any award recommendations, and the controls to change them, save, and approve.

One written answer can also be changed without opening the panel. A creative scorecard's feedback answers sit in their own columns on the queue, and clicking one opens it on its own, to read in full or to edit — see The two feedback columns. Everything below is the panel.

Most rows are a judge's filing. Some are a colleague's — see Filling out a scorecard yourself — and the panel works the same way for both.

Editing is for moderation, not re-judging. Every save is recorded under your name and the judge's original filing stays on record; nothing on the queue's row marks the edit — the scorecard's history is the record. Use it to fix a wording problem or an obvious slip. When the fix is the judge's to make, Send back to judge in the row's menu returns the scorecard to them with a note — see Sending a scorecard back to its judge.

Opening, closing and resizing

The panel opens on the click. The frame, its width, the submission's title and the line of facts under it — the tracking number, the category, the Creative / Technical / Press kit pill, the state pill and "Filed by …" — are on screen in the same moment you press, drawn from the row you clicked. The scorecard itself — every answer, the feedback, the recommendations and the footer's controls — arrives just behind them, and until it does the body shows placeholder bars and the footer offers only Close.

Reopening a scorecard you have already looked at is instant. Its record is still in your browser from the first time, so there is nothing to wait for — and if it has been sitting there a while it is quietly re-read behind what you are already reading.

The address keeps the panel open — reload and it is still there, and the link opens the same scorecard for a colleague. Opened from a link, the header may arrive with the record rather than ahead of it.
Close it with Escape, a click on the darkened queue behind it, or the ✕ in the header. Closing costs nothing: the queue behind it does not reload, does not lose your place in it and does not forget which rows you had ticked.
It keeps up while it stands open. The record is re-read about once a minute while the tab is in front of you, and whenever you come back to it — the same rhythm as the queue behind it. A colleague's approval shows up as the approval receipt in the footer without your closing anything. A colleague's saved edit lands in the fields too, as long as you have not started editing — an untouched panel simply shows their version. If you had already changed something, your edits stay: the fields keep what you typed, the footer reads "Unsaved changes." because they no longer match what is saved, and Discard changes loads their version.
Resize it by dragging its left edge; the edge also takes keyboard focus and moves in steps with the arrow keys. Your width is remembered in this browser. On a narrow window (below roughly 700px) the panel fills the screen and the drag edge is gone.
Opening a different scorecard starts fresh — unsaved edits to the previous one are discarded without asking. Save before you move on.

When the record cannot be shown

Two things can leave the panel standing with nothing in its body, and they say different things.

"This scorecard is no longer in the queue." Somebody took the scorecard out of the queue, or its submission out of the season, while you had it open — so there is no record left to read. The queue behind the panel re-reads itself as it happens, and the row leaves with it. Close the panel; there is nothing to retry.

"This scorecard could not be loaded.", with a Try again button under it. The record simply could not be fetched — a connection that dropped, or a moment the server could not answer. Nothing is wrong with the scorecard itself: press Try again and it loads.

In both cases the panel keeps the title, the line of facts, the ✕ and its Close button, and it closes every way it usually does. What is missing is the scorecard, because there is nothing yet to draw.

The header

The submission's title, then the facts that pin which scorecard this is: the tracking number, its category (or categories), a Creative / Technical / Press kit pill, the state pill, and one line about the filing — "Filed by Daniel Kwon, Aug 12, 41m elapsed", the elapsed running from the judge first opening the film to filing it.

A colleague's filing reads "Filed by Fay Festival (staff), Aug 17" — with the marker, and with no elapsed figure. Elapsed measures how long a judge had the film, and a staff filing is written and filed in one act, so there is nothing to report.

A creative scorecard whose category the film has since left reads "Drama Film (removed)" where its category would be. The film no longer competes in that category — somebody removed it with Edit categories — so the scorecard no longer counts toward the film's score, its panel or its filmmaker's page. It is still a filed scorecard: it can be read and approved, and an approved judge's scorecard is still paid. See A scorecard on a removed category.

Who can edit

Editing, adding, changing or withdrawing a recommendation, and approving all need the "Approve scorecards and resolve flags" capability — the same rule as the queue itself; see Who can work here. Without it the panel opens read-only, with the reason in its footer: "Your role cannot approve scorecards. Ask a coordinator or festival admin."

With it, every filed scorecard is editable, approved ones included — with one exception, a colleague's scorecard on a category the film has left. See Editing an approved scorecard and A scorecard on a removed category.

Editing an approved scorecard

Approval no longer seals a scorecard. A coordinator or festival admin can correct any filed scorecard at any time, before or after approval — so approving is no longer a decision you have to be certain about, and a typo found a week later is still a typo you can fix.

What that looks like in the panel:

It opens unlocked. The fields are editable, Save changes works, and Discard changes appears as soon as you change something — exactly as on an unapproved card.
Saving changes nothing about its approval. The scorecard stays approved, stays on the Approved tab, and keeps its original approver and timestamp. There is no un-approve step, no re-approve step and no email.
The Approve button is inert and reads "Approved". Approving twice is not a gesture; Save is what an approved card offers.
The footer answers your edit, not the approval. It reads "Unsaved changes." while you are working and "Saved just now by your name." after, and falls back to the approval receipt — "Approved 4m ago by Camille Duarte. The score is released to the season's scoring." — whenever nothing is in flight.
The change is in the scorecard's history under your name, the same as any other edit. Nothing on the row marks it.

Two consequences worth being deliberate about:

The filmmaker's copy changes with it. A released scorecard's page is read live, so a submitter who has already unlocked it — possibly paid to — sees your corrected wording the next time they open it. Nothing tells them it changed.
Un-approving is still impossible, for everybody, by any route. So is moving an approval's timestamp or its name. Approval is what a filmmaker's access is built on; it only goes one way.

A scorecard on a removed category

When a category is taken off a submission, the creative scorecards filed or started under it are not deleted. They stay in the queue, labelled with the category's name and (removed), and the Category filter still finds them under that category.

The scorecard is	What you can do
A judge's	Read it, edit it and approve it exactly as any other — approving it makes it payable to the judge at the rate it would have earned.
A colleague's, filed from the Submissions list	Read it and approve it — and nothing else. Every field is read-only, there is no Rewrite and no Withdraw recommendation, and the footer reads "This scorecard's category was removed from the submission, so it can no longer be edited." A colleague's filing arrives already approved, so in practice there is nothing left to press.

Either way, it no longer counts toward the film. It is out of the film's score in every category, its panel and its fully judged count, and out of what the filmmaker reads — a filmmaker who bought that category before it was removed keeps the section as it stood at removal, not this card. Its award recommendations still count toward the season's library awards.

If the category is ticked again later, the film is judged in it afresh: this card does not come back into the category.

A creative scorecard

The panel shows whatever the scorecard actually asks. Scorecards are written per category — see Building a scorecard — so one festival's panel shows five 1-to-10 rows and another's shows a mix of question kinds:

1-to-10 questions — a row of ten cells with the judge's pick pressed, and an indigo 8 / 10 readout beside the question. Click a different cell to change it. A score can be changed but never cleared — the judge filed a complete scorecard, and a save cannot make it less than complete.
Yes/No questions — a Yes and a No button.
Single-choice and multiple-choice questions — the authored options, as a pick-one or tick-several list.
Written-answer questions — a text box.

The card's header carries Overall — the ten-point chip, 8.6, which recalculates live as you change answers. Once an edit of yours has changed a scored answer, a foot line appears — "The judge filed 8.2." — so the original total is never more than a glance away. An unedited scorecard shows no foot line, because the current total is the judge's.

On a colleague's filing that line still reads "The judge filed…", which is the wrong word for a staff card. Read it as "as filed".

The filmmaker's own questions

Under the festival's questions, inside the same card, a creative scorecard can carry a second block headed QUESTIONS FROM THE FILMMAKER, with the submitter's own one or two questions marked Q1 and Q2 and this judge's answers to them.

The person who entered the film wrote those questions, on their own private submission page, before the first creative card was filed. Every creative judge on the film has to answer them, and the answers go back to the filmmaker on their scorecard, under You asked. See Letting submitters fix their own details.

They are editable exactly as everything else on the card is, under the same capability and the same lock. A read-only block would make these the one thing you could see a typo in and not fix.
A set answer can be changed but never cleared, the same rule as a score: the judge filed a complete card, and a save cannot make it less than complete. Clicking the cell that is already chosen keeps it.
A free-text answer carries the Rewrite button and the selection bar — the filmmaker reads it word for word, so it is moderated like the feedback boxes. The festival's own free-text questions do not have it. See Rewriting written feedback.
None of it touches the Overall chip. These answers are not scored — not even the 1-to-10 ones — so editing them never moves the card's total or the film's score.
Your edits are recorded in the scorecard's history under your name, with the before and the after, the same as any other answer.
You cannot add, reword or remove a question here. They are the filmmaker's, they were frozen the moment the first creative card on that film was filed, and no screen in the product can change one afterwards.

Most scorecards have no block at all. Nothing is drawn where it would be — it is not a feature the festival switched off, it is a submitter who asked nothing.

The written feedback

Creative scorecards carry the judge's written feedback — Positive feedback and Opportunities for improvement — in the boxes the scorecard has switched on, which is both of them on most scorecards. See Written feedback.

A box that is on is shown, editable, and required. A save that leaves it empty is refused, naming exactly what is blank: "Both feedback fields need text before saving.", "Positive feedback needs text before saving." or "Opportunities for improvement needs text before saving."
A box that is off is not shown, and nothing is asked of it. Your save leaves whatever it held exactly as it was. A scorecard with both switched off has no feedback section in the panel at all.
The switches are read as they stand now. If a box was switched on after the judge filed, it appears here — empty, if the judge was never shown it — and the panel will neither save nor approve until you write something in it: Save changes and Approve scorecard both stay greyed. Approve on the queue's bulk bar does not wait for it — ticked and approved there, the scorecard is approved with that box still empty; see What approving does. If a box was switched off after the judge filed, what they wrote is no longer shown here or to the filmmaker, and it is not deleted.

A scorecard filed moments ago may still be getting its proofread. A judge's feedback — and a colleague's, filed from the Submissions list — is proofread for spelling, grammar and punctuation just after it files, and the corrected wording replaces the filed text a few seconds later. Open the panel in that moment and you may read, or approve, the text as it was typed; the correction still lands afterwards, and a panel standing open picks it up when it re-reads, the same way it picks up a colleague's saved edit. Save an edit to the feedback first and your edit is kept — the correction is dropped. And once the film's scorecard has been sent out to its filmmaker, nothing is corrected.

Each box carries a Rewrite button at the right end of its label row, for anyone who can edit here. It sends that one box's text to OpenAI and puts the tidied version back in its place, under an Undo — nothing is saved until you press Save changes, and the box is only locked while its own rewrite is out. Highlight words inside a box and a small bar offers Rewrite, Extend, Shorten and Custom for those words alone. What is sent and what is not, what Undo does, and what the two failure sentences mean are all in Rewriting written feedback.

Either box can also be changed from the queue without opening this panel. Both answers sit in their own columns on the Review Queue, and clicking one opens it alone, with the same box, the same Rewrite button and a Save that writes that one answer and nothing else — see The two feedback columns. The same rules apply: required while its box is on, up to 4,000 characters, recorded under your name.

Your edits are attributed to you in the scorecard's history, and the judge keeps their original wording on record — see Saving.

The filmmaker reads this. Once the scorecard is released — with the season, or on its own ahead of it — the person who submitted the film can unlock a page carrying every box that is switched on, in full, under Positive feedback and Opportunities, credited to "Judge 1", "Judge 2" and so on. Approving is what puts your version of the wording — not the judge's original — in front of them. Nothing is sent the moment you approve; releasing is a separate, deliberate step, on Settings → Results for the season or on the submission's detail panel for one film. Moderate the wording as if it will be read, because it will be — and, on an approved scorecard, as if it is being read, because it may be. A line of it may also be quoted on the filmmaker's share card, if they choose it — see Sharing your scorecard.

The same is true of the filmmaker's own questions, one block up: those answers reach the same page, under the same numbered judge — and of a judge's answer to one of the festival's own free-text questions that is shown on the scorecard, which can be quoted on a share card too.

The award recommendations

A creative scorecard lists each award recommended for the film on it, with a one-line reason under each — editable, and optional: a recommendation with no reason saves and approves like any other. The count of live recommendations sits at the right of the card's heading. A card with none reads "This judge recommended no awards".

Add a recommendation — a searchable list under the recommendations of the awards this film is eligible for and the card does not already name. Pick one and it joins the card, marked Added by coordinator, with a box for your reason. It is saved with Save changes (or Save and approve), not on the click; Remove takes back one you have not saved yet.
Change which award a recommendation names — the award's name on a kept recommendation is a picker. Choose another eligible award and, once you save, the recommendation reads Changed by coordinator. A recommendation you added keeps its Added by coordinator mark however often you change it.
Withdraw recommendation stands a recommendation down. It takes effect immediately — no save needed — the row greys out with a strike through the award's name and a "Withdrawn by you" chip. A withdrawn recommendation is not entered into the award pool when the scorecard is approved, and it drops out of the row's "1 award rec" chip on the queue.
Restore recommendation puts it back, immediately, reason and all.

Three is the most one scorecard holds, whoever added them — the judge's and yours together, withdrawn ones not counted. At three, the add list gives way to "A scorecard holds at most three award recommendations." Restoring a withdrawn recommendation is never refused for this.

Only the season's library awards can be recommended, and only those the film is eligible for through one of its categories — the same list the judge picks from. A festival that wants a film in a pool it cannot be recommended for adds it by hand from the pool screen.

Your marks follow the recommendation everywhere it is read. "Added by coordinator" and "Changed by coordinator" show here, under the entrant's route on the award pool, and on the judge's own view of their scorecard — so a recommendation you made never reads as theirs. The judge is not emailed about it, cannot change or remove a recommendation you added or changed, and no longer sees a recommendation you withdrew.

On an already-approved scorecard, these act differently on the pool, and it is worth knowing which:

Withdrawing does not take the film out of the award's pool. The pool holds one row per film per award however many judges recommended it, so removing it on one withdrawal would drop a place another judge's recommendation still earns. Retire a pool place from the pool screen instead.
Restoring, adding or changing puts the film into that award's pool, if it was not already there. Changing does not take it out of the old award's pool — retire that place by hand if you mean it gone.

Withdraw and restore are recorded in the scorecard's history like every other change. One wrinkle: the chip reads "Withdrawn by you" whoever actually withdrew it, so on a scorecard a colleague worked through, read it as "withdrawn by a coordinator".

Recommendations are not on the submitter's scorecard. Neither the recommendation nor its reason appears there, withdrawn or standing.

A technical or press-kit scorecard

The checklist, one row per item, each worth its authored points:

Pass or Fail on every item, with the item's points beside it — 10 / 10 on a pass, 0 / 10 on a fail.
A fail may carry one line for the coordinator, and does not have to. Failing an item reveals its note box; a save with the note empty is accepted. Passing an item again hides the note.
The card's header totals it — the raw 16 / 20 and the banded ten-point chip (8.0) together. A foot line, "The judge filed 9.0.", appears once your edits have changed a mark.

A press-kit scorecard works exactly the same way — same marks, same notes, same totals — and its checklist card is headed Technical review, the same heading the technical card wears; the Press kit pill in the panel's header is what tells them apart.

Neither one ever carries the filmmaker's questions. Only a creative card is asked them, so only a creative card can answer them here. Neither carries written feedback boxes either.

The marks reach the submitter; the notes do not. A released scorecard shows each technical item as passed or not, and each press-kit item as counted or not beside the press kit's mark out of ten — a failed press-kit mark reads "Not provided, so it did not count". The line you wrote for the coordinator on a failed item stays inside your organization.

Saving

Saving is explicit. There is no autosave. The footer tracks where you stand, in one line: "No changes yet." → "Unsaved changes." → "Saved just now by your name." — or, when something is invalid, "Fix the fields marked above before saving." with the field's own message under it in red.

Save changes commits everything at once — answers, the filmmaker's answers, feedback, marks, recommendation reasons, and any recommendation you added or pointed at a different award, together. It only lights up while something has changed and everything is valid, and it is held — the approve button beside it too — while a rewrite of any box is still out (see Rewriting written feedback). It waits for the server and for the queue behind the panel to re-read itself, so by the time the footer reads "Saved just now" the row's score already agrees with the panel.
Discard changes appears only while you have unsaved edits, and reverts to the last save — not to the judge's original. Saved edits are the scorecard's current version; the original filing is history, reachable in no other sense than the "The judge filed…" line. It also drops any rewrite still running.
Closing the panel discards unsaved edits without asking.

Every save is one attributed entry in the scorecard's record — who, when, and each answer's before and after, with the judge's filing as the first "before". The screen shows the "The judge filed…" line rather than the full trail; there is no history view to read yet.

If two people edit the same scorecard at once, the last save wins the current values — and both saves are on the record, so nothing about who changed what is lost.

Approving from the panel

The footer's primary button approves this one scorecard, with everything that implies — the release, the award-pool entries: see What approving does.

With no unsaved edits it reads Approve scorecard.
With unsaved edits it reads Save and approve — one press, two acts: your edits are saved first, then the approval lands. If the save is refused, nothing is approved.
It stays greyed while a feedback box that is switched on is empty — most often a box switched on after the judge filed. Write something in it, and it lights up as Save and approve. See The written feedback.
Once approved it reads Approved and goes inert, and the footer states the release: "Approved just now by Camille Duarte. The score is released to the season's scoring." The fields stay editable — see Editing an approved scorecard.
On a scorecard you sent back to its judge there is no Approve button at all. It is with the judge until they file it again; you can still read and edit it. See Sending a scorecard back to its judge.
On a technical scorecard, approving also opens the film to creative judges in the categories that use it, on a season where creative judging waits for technical approval.

Approving is also what makes the scorecard exist for its filmmaker. It is not sent then — scorecards go out in a deliberate step of their own, later, for the season or for one submission — but only approved scorecards are ever released, and a scorecard approved after that step appears on the submitter's page the next time they open it. Their own questions follow the same rule: an answer only reaches them once the card carrying it is approved, which is why a submitter can see two answers on one category and three on another. A scorecard on a removed category is the exception: approving it releases it to your season's records and the judge's pay, and to no filmmaker's page.

On an already-approved scorecard the panel opens with the approval receipt in its footer and its Approve button inert, and everything else live.

If a save is refused

The message appears in the panel's footer, in red, and under the field it belongs to; nothing closes and your draft is kept.

The message	What it means
"Scores are whole numbers from 1 to 10."	A scale answer is missing or out of range.
"Both feedback fields need text before saving."	A creative save with both feedback boxes empty — on a scorecard that has both switched on.
"Positive feedback needs text before saving." / "Opportunities for improvement needs text before saving."	The same, with that one box empty — the other is filled in, or switched off.
"This scorecard's category was removed from the submission, so it can no longer be edited."	A colleague's scorecard on a category the film has left. It can still be approved; nothing about it can be changed. See A scorecard on a removed category.
"Something in the form is not valid. Check the fields and try again."	The panel sent something the server would not accept — most often an answer to one of the filmmaker's questions that no longer matches the question, because the submitter reworded or removed it while the panel stood open. Close the panel and reopen it.
"This scorecard could not be saved. It may have been withdrawn, or your access to this season changed while you were working."	The scorecard was voided, or your write access to the season was taken away, with the panel open. Approval is no longer one of the causes.
"That recommendation is no longer on this scorecard. Refresh the page."	The recommendation changed under you.
"A scorecard holds at most three award recommendations."	A save would leave the card with a fourth live recommendation — somebody else added one while the panel was open.
"That award can't be recommended for this film. Refresh the page."	The award you added or changed to is no longer eligible for the film, or is already on the card.
"That recommendation could not be changed. Refresh the page."	The recommendation moved under you — on a scorecard sent back to its judge, for instance, the judge may be changing their own picks.
"This scorecard is no longer in the review window. Refresh the page."	The scorecard was voided, or its submission removed, while the panel was open. Within a minute the panel says so itself — see When the record cannot be shown.
"The change could not be saved. Try again."	Something went wrong in transit. Nothing was written.

The two sentences a Rewrite can leave under a feedback box are a different set, and neither of them is a refused save — see If it fails.

Rewriting written feedback — the Rewrite button on each feedback box and on a filmmaker's free-text answer: what it sends, what it does not, and Undo.
Review Queue — the two feedback columns, and the pop-out that edits one answer without the panel.
Building a scorecard — the two switches that decide which feedback boxes a scorecard asks for.
Filling out a scorecard yourself — writing one from the Submissions list, rather than reading one a judge filed.
Letting submitters fix their own details — the page a filmmaker writes their own questions on, and what freezes them.
Releasing scorecards — the step that puts approved scorecards in front of the people who submitted the films.
Releasing one submission's scorecard — the same step for one film, ahead of its season.