Judges

The people who will score one season's submissions: who has been invited, who has accepted, what each of them may be given, what each of them is paid, and who is paused or gone. This is the screen a season's panel is built on.

It is a working screen: you can invite judges by email, change what someone is on the panel, narrow what they may be given, decide whether submissions that can only be watched on FilmFreeway may reach them, pause and resume their access, and take somebody off the season. What you cannot do here is hand anybody a particular film — nobody is assigned work on FilmScorecard; each judge's queue is worked out from the season and the scope you set, see How the judging queue works. The roster's counts are real: Pending and Completed count each judge's filed scorecards, and Last active is the date of their newest filing — the same facts the Review Queue works from. On what "assigned" would even mean here, see Nothing is assigned yet.

This screen is the Roster tab of three, all on one page. Beside it sit Judge requests — judges who applied to one of this season's open calls — and Invites sent, every offer this season has out. Both used to live on your organization's Judges screen and cover every festival at once; they are season screens now. See Finding the screen.

No column on the table shows money, and one card inside a judge's panel does. The Pricing tab of a judge's panel says what that judge is paid, per category — or that they hold a volunteer place and are paid nothing. What a judge was offered is on Invites sent; what they are owed, and what has been paid them, is the season's Payouts screen, which is a section of its own in the navigation and a different permission.

To find judges you have never worked with, rather than manage the ones you have, see the Judges directory. For the decisions a judge can now make about you — pausing, asking to leave, refusing invitations — see When a judge pauses or asks to leave. Every invitation carries its own terms, whichever route it takes onto this roster: its rates, or the fact that it pays nothing — see What an invitation pays.

Finding the screen

Judges is the fourth row in the season block of the left navigation, under your festival's name, between Imports and Review Queue.

The row carries no count. The counts this navigation keeps are for work waiting on a person — Review Queue's and Awards' — and nothing on a roster is waiting on anybody. The number of judges on the season is on the Roster tab under the screen's heading — see The tabs.

That tab's count is of this season only, so it can be lower than the number of rows in front of you: people who judged an earlier season of this festival also appear on the list, marked Archived, and are not counted. See Judges from earlier seasons.

Its address is:

/org/<organization>/<festival>/<season>/judges

The tabs

Under the Judges heading, a strip of three:

/org/<organization>/<festival>/<season>/judges?tab=requests
/org/<organization>/<festival>/<season>/judges?tab=invites

Switching tabs is instant. The three lists arrive with the page, so a click shows the next one straight away and nothing reloads. The address changes to name the tab you are on, so a reload, a bookmark or a link you send a colleague opens the same tab. The browser's Back button leaves the Judges screen rather than stepping back through the tabs you looked at. The old addresses, …/judges/requests and …/judges/invites, still work: a bookmark or a link in an older email opens the tab it names.

A count of zero shows no badge at all, and the Roster badge is never amber — nothing on this list is waiting on a person.

Each tab's count follows the newest thing the strip knows. The count on the tab you are standing on moves with that list — within a minute of a colleague's change, and the moment one of your own has been re-read: a record deleted here drops Roster by one, an application accepted on Requests drops that count by one, an offer revoked on Invites sent drops that one. The counts on the two tabs you are not standing on move with your own actions too — an application you accept lifts Roster at once — and otherwise stand as they were when the page last loaded, or as that tab's list last read them, whichever is newer; a colleague's change on a tab you are not on shows when you open it.

Whether the strip is there at all is a permission — see Who can work here.

The open judge is kept in the address — and so are the tab of their panel you are on, whether the roles editor is open, and any scorecard you have opened from it. Your search, the two filters and the sort are working state that resets when you leave the page. Open somebody's panel and the address says so: a reload keeps it open, and the link opens the same panel for a colleague. The browser's Back button does not close it — use Escape, the ✕, Close, or a click on the darkened list behind it.

The roster keeps itself up to date

The season's roster is read once and then held in your browser. The search box, the Role and Status filters and every column sort are worked out from what is already loaded — each applies as you press it, and nothing reloads the page.

And the roster re-reads itself in the background, so a screen you left open after lunch is not a lunchtime's worth out of date:

• Whenever you come back to the tab. Switch to another window or another application and back, and the roster re-reads itself as you return — a glance away of a few seconds is too short to bother it.
• About once a minute while the tab is in front of you.
• Never while the tab is behind something else. A forgotten tab asks the festival's records for nothing.
• Straight after anything you change here — an invitation sent or resent, roles or scope saved, FilmFreeway access switched, a judge paused, resumed, removed or deleted, a scorecard approved from a judge's panel. Each of those waits for the server and then re-reads the roster before it lets go, so when a dialog closes or an editor reports "Saved", the rows behind it already agree. The FilmFreeway switch is the one control that moves first — the row changes the instant you press it, the save follows, and the roster is re-read once it lands; see FilmFreeway access. The other exception is a message sent to a judge, which changes nothing on the list and so re-reads nothing.

What arrives that way is what other people have been doing: a judge who has just accepted their invitation appears on the list as Active, a judge a colleague paused reads Paused, a scorecard a judge has just filed lifts their Pending and Completed counts and moves their Last active, a leave request shows its amber pill, a FilmFreeway switch a colleague flipped reads its new way — each within a minute, in place, under whatever search, filters and sort you are working in. The counts beside the filter options, the footer line and the Roster tab's count all move with it.

A refresh never moves you. Your scroll position, the rows you have ticked and an open panel all survive it. The one thing it takes away is a tick on a row that has left the roster — a record a colleague deleted while you had it ticked drops out of your selection and out of the count on the bulk bar, because there is nothing left there to act on.

When the roster cannot refresh

A refresh that fails is retried a few times before anything is said. If all of those fail, one message appears at the bottom of the screen:

Couldn't refresh the list. Showing what was last loaded.

The rows stay exactly where they are. Nothing is emptied, nothing is greyed out and nothing you were doing is lost — what you are reading is simply the last version that arrived, and the next refresh that works replaces it. When that refresh lands the message goes away on its own, because it has stopped being true; you can also clear it sooner with Dismiss.

If your session has ended, this is where you find out: you signed out in another tab, or somebody removed your access to this festival while you had the roster open. The screen does not leave you on rows you can no longer act on — it sends you to the log-in screen, or to an ordinary "page not found" if the season is no longer yours to see.

Who can work here

Everyone in your organization who can open the season sees this roster, with the same buttons. There is no separate read-only version: the invite button, the row menu and the editors are drawn alike for everybody — except that the FilmFreeway switch is greyed for anybody without Manage judges and assignments on this season. Anyone who cannot open the season at all gets an ordinary "page not found"; a logged-out visitor is sent to the log-in screen first.

Changing anything on the roster needs Manage judges and assignments on this season, together with a role that can change the season. That covers every write on this tab: inviting, resending, changing roles and scope, the FilmFreeway switch, pausing and resuming, removing, deleting a record, and the bulk bar. Organization owners and admins, festival admins and coordinators have it by default; programmers and viewers do not, and a per-person override on Festival access moves it either way — though a Viewer given the box still cannot change anything.

Somebody without it sees the other buttons and is refused when they press them. The invite dialog, the editors and the confirmations answer "You do not have permission to change this roster." and nothing is changed. The FilmFreeway switch is the one control that shows the rule in advance: it is greyed for them. This is new: the roster's own controls used to work for anyone who could change the season, programmers included. If a programmer should look after judges, tick Manage judges and assignments for them on Festival access.

One more control on this screen follows a capability of its own. Approving a scorecard from a judge's panel — see Scorecards — needs "Approve scorecards and resolve flags" on this season, exactly as it does on the Review Queue; without it the scorecard opens read-only.

The two tabs beside it need Manage judges and assignments to open at all. Somebody without it sees this roster with no tab strip at all — not a greyed one — and an address naming either tab opens this roster for them instead.

Judge pay is a different permission and a different screen. What each judge has earned and what has been paid them lives under Payouts in the navigation, behind View revenue and payouts — which festival admins hold by default and coordinators do not. The two permissions are read separately, so a coordinator can run this whole screen and never see the ledger, and an accountant given revenue alone gets the Payouts section and this roster with no tab strip — and cannot change it.

What a judge's own place is worth is on this screen, though, on the Pricing tab of their panel — which everybody who can open this roster can read. The division is between what was agreed and what is owed, not between two levels of secrecy.

Judges cannot open this screen. Being on this roster grants nothing on the festival's own screens. See Judging coordinators are staff, not judges.

The header

• Judges — one heading, shared by every tab, with the tab strip under it. At its right, on the same line, Judging coordinators: the people in your organization holding a Coordinator grant that reaches this season, one chip per person, with "this season only" on a chip whose grant covers just this season. Hover a chip for the email. With nobody delegated it reads "No coordinators assigned". See Judging coordinators are staff, not judges.
• Filmmaker ratings, on the same line just before the coordinators — see What filmmakers think of the reviews.
• The festival's name and the season underneath, and beside them a pill reading "Judging closes Aug 24, 12 days left" — only when the season has a judging close date. No date, no pill and no gap where one would be. The date is set on the Season tab of Festival settings. Once the date has passed the pill reads "0 days left" rather than counting backwards.

The rule that never changes, though the screen no longer prints it: judges never see each other's scores, identities, or a submission total. Nor what each other is paid. A volunteer on a paying panel is not told that anybody else is being paid, and a paid judge is not told that anybody is volunteering.

What filmmakers think of the reviews

A filmmaker who unlocks their scorecard can rate it, on a 1-to-10 scale: four questions about the scorecard as a whole, and one about each judge on it. You see averages, never one filmmaker's answers.

On the title line, under FILMMAKER RATINGS, four chips give this season's averages for the four general questions, to one decimal:

An average shows only once at least three filmmakers have answered that question. Until then the chip reads "Not enough ratings yet" — and while no question has three answers, the line reads only Filmmaker ratings · Not enough ratings yet. The figures are the same on all three tabs.

Each judge's own figure is on their panel, on the Progress tab. Judges never see any of it — not their own average, not the season's.

The seven statuses

Only Active and Paused are shown until you ask for the others. With nothing ticked in the Status filter, the list is the roster — the judges who are on this season. Invited, Declined, Removed, Revoked and Archived rows are there, but hidden: tick a status in the filter and you see exactly those. The offers and what came back are the Invites sent tab's whole subject, which is where an unanswered invitation is looked for; the other four are history. The counts beside each status in the filter are over every row, so you can see there are archived judges to ask for before you tick the box.

Declined, Removed, Revoked and Archived rows are drawn quieter than the rest, the same way a not-selected submission is: nobody is waiting on them.

Active also means the terms are fixed. Accepting freezes what that judge is paid for the season — and whether they are paid at all — and no screen can change either afterwards. See What an invitation pays.

Active does not mean films are reaching them yet. A judge is offered films only once the season's judging has been opened on its dashboard and its opening date has passed — see How the judging queue works.

"Leave requested" is not a status

A judge can ask to leave a season from their own account screen. When they do, an amber ⚠ triangle appears to the right of their name on the row (hover it for the sentence), and an amber Leave requested pill beside the status in the header of their panel — never instead of it. An Active judge who has asked to leave still reads Active, because that is still exactly what they are: they keep their access, keep their open work, and keep being offered films.

Removing them from the season is how you confirm it, and it is the only resolution — there is no accept button and the pill does not expire. You are emailed when the request is made. See When a judge pauses or asks to leave.

Reading a row

• Judge — the name, which is a button that opens their panel, over a monospace JDG-0001 and their email address. That number is the judge's own across the whole platform — see Judge IDs are one number per person.
  • The name is their display name, or their full name, or — until they have an account with either — the email address itself. A judge you have just invited is only an address, so that is what the row shows, and the second line then leaves the address out rather than printing it twice.
  • In practice every judge shows as an email address today. A judge's name lives on their own account, and an account whose only connection to your organization is judging is not readable by it — so a judge who has set a display name while setting up their profile still appears here by address. Nothing on this screen changes that, and nothing has gone wrong.
  • A Films only or Screenplays only mark sits under the name when the judge's submission type has been narrowed. See Judging scope.
  • An amber Conflict mark appears when this address also submitted to this season. See When a judge is also a submitter.
• Role — one pill per role held, so a judge who holds both shows two. The cell wraps.
• FilmFreeway — a switch: whether this judge may be offered submissions whose only screener is on FilmFreeway. It is your festival's decision about this judge on this season, not a fact about the judge, and flipping it takes effect on their queue at once. Greyed on Declined, Removed, Revoked and Archived rows, and for anybody without Manage judges and assignments on this season. See FilmFreeway access.
• Categories — how many of the season's categories this judge can be assigned. All means every category, including ones attached to the season later; a number means exactly those categories, and hovering it lists them. A judge holding no role reads "—", because scope does not apply until they hold one. See Judging scope.
• Status — one of the seven above. A judge who has asked to leave keeps their status and gets an amber triangle beside their name instead. See "Leave requested" is not a status.
• Pending — how many of this judge's filed cards sit at Awaiting review on the Review Queue, waiting for someone to approve them. A flagged or returned card is not in this number; approving is what moves it down. It wears the queue's own tint while it is above zero.
• Completed — how many scorecards this judge has filed this season. Filing is what it measures: awaiting, approved, flagged and returned cards all stay in the count. A judge who has filed nothing reads 0.
• Remaining — how many more films this judge could still score. Before judging opens it is every film in their scope; once it is open it is the films their queue offers them right now plus any they are holding and have not filed. A film whose creative scorecard is waiting for its technical scorecard to be approved still counts — it is work they have left, even though their queue does not offer it yet; see How the judging queue works. It is an upper bound: films are shared, so as other judges fill a film's panel it leaves everyone else's count. A film you have put On hold is in nobody's figure, before judging opens or after — unless the judge is already part-way through it, when it still counts for them; see Holding a submission out of judging. A judge who is not Active reads "—".
• Pending, Owed and Paid — the money columns, after Left — in the order money moves — the judge's money this season, shown only to people who can see revenue, and only on a paid season. Pending (Pending pay, in full) is what their scorecards still waiting for approval would add once approved; Owed (Outstanding, in full) is their approved scorecards' pay less what has been paid; Paid is what has been logged as paid to them — the last two the same figures as Paying your judges. Zero reads "—". The three figures are centred in their columns.
• Last active — the date of the judge's newest scorecard filing (Aug 11). A judge who has filed nothing reads "—" — filing is the one act this column measures, so signing in moves nothing.
• The three-dot menu at the end of the row — see The row menu.

The two counts are buttons. Press either and the judge's panel opens straight onto its Scorecards tab, where the cards behind the number are listed.

No column on this roster shows money, and none says whether a judge is paid or volunteering. Open their panel's Pricing tab for that, one judge at a time. What a judge was offered is on Invites sent, and only for judges who were sent an invitation; what they are owed from approved scorecards is on the season's Payouts screen, for the people allowed to see revenue.

Hovering a row turns its row number into a checkbox; on a phone the checkboxes are simply always there.

The table scrolls sideways rather than restacking. When the card is narrower than the table it slides under a heading row pinned to the top, with the checkbox and Judge columns pinned to the left so you can always tell whose figures you are reading. The rows stay rows at every width — they exist to be compared. The two pipeline tabs behave the same way.

Searching, filtering and sorting

The toolbar above the table:

• The search box is headed "Search name or email" and matches those two and the JDG- number, so a judge ID pasted from an email finds its row. It filters as you type; there is no delay and no Search button, because the whole roster is already on screen.
• Role — Creative judge and Technical reviewer, with a count beside each.
• Status — Active, Paused, Invited, Declined, Removed, Revoked, Archived, in that order: the two on the roster, then the invitation's other answers, then history. With nothing ticked the trigger reads "On roster" and the list shows Active and Paused only; ticking any status shows exactly the statuses ticked, so ticking Archived alone shows the archived judges and nobody else. See The seven statuses.
• Clear filters appears as soon as anything is set, and puts the list back to the roster.

A judge matches if they hold either of the roles ticked, and must satisfy both filters together. A judge holding both roles is counted under each, which is why the role counts do not add up to the size of the roster. A status nobody currently holds is still listed, with a 0 — the seven are a fixed vocabulary, so "no paused judges" never looks like "no Paused filter". Every count is measured across the whole roster and never cross-filtered.

There is no filter for leave requests, none for paid against volunteer places, and none for FilmFreeway access either. The pill is the only way to spot a leave request, a judge's panel is the only way to read their terms, and sorting the FilmFreeway column is the way to gather the switches that are off — see Sorting.

Sorting

All eight column headings are sort buttons. Click once to sort by a column, click again to reverse it; the active heading carries a caret. The list arrives sorted by Judge, A to Z, and the name breaks every tie, always.

Three things about the order worth knowing:

• Pending and Completed sort by their counts. On a roster where every count is equal — a season before filing starts — both sorts fall through to the name, so nothing visibly moves.
• Sorting by Last active puts judges with no filings at the bottom, whichever way the arrow points — "not yet" is not "a long time ago".
• FilmFreeway sorts by the switch. The first click puts the judges whose access is off first — the ones a FilmFreeway-only submission cannot reach — and the second puts the ones it is on first. On a roster where every switch is set the same way the sort falls through to the name.

Changing the search, either filter, or the sort clears any rows you had ticked. That is deliberate: a bulk action against rows nobody can see any more is the one way this screen could act on people you did not mean.

The footer

One line under the table:

Showing 8 of 12 judges, filters applied, sorted by judge. 3 scorecards await review.

The clause about filters appears only when something is narrowing the list. The "of" figure is the statuses you are looking at, before the search and the Role filter narrow them: the roster itself with nothing ticked, or the archived judges with Archived ticked — never the hidden rows. The awaiting figure is the whole roster's count of filed scorecards at the Awaiting review state — it does not shrink when you filter, and it is the same set the Pending column counts row by row. The plain count beside the Review Queue's navigation row is the wider number — the awaiting and flagged cards together — and its amber count beside it is the open issues judges have raised.

When the table is empty

Two different empty states, because they need two different answers:

• Nobody on the season yet — "No judges on this season yet", with "Invite the people who will score this season's submissions. They pick up their roles from the invitation." and an Invite judges button. When offers are out and nobody has accepted, the second line reads "Invitations still out are on the Invites sent tab. Judges join the roster when they accept." instead — the invited rows are hidden here until you tick Invited.
• Nothing matches your filters — "No judges match these filters", with "Widen the role or status filter, or clear the search." and Clear filters.

The two roles

A judge holds one or both of these, and the invitation is where they are first chosen.

Every role on this roster files scorecards. There is no roster role that reviews other people's work; the judge whose name is on a row is somebody you are asking to score films. What each role is asked is described in The creative scorecard and The technical review card.

Both roles are paid per scorecard filed — when the place they are held on is a paid one — and both are offered by every invitation route: this dialog, the Judges directory and Invites sent. An open-call applicant picks one of them for themselves, out of what the call hires for. See What an invitation pays.

Neither role decides whether somebody is paid. That is a property of their place, chosen when the invitation is sent — see The terms block.

Judging coordinators are staff, not judges

A judging coordinator is a member of your organization, not a row on this roster. Somebody who reviews and approves filed scorecards, chases judges and settles screener problems does that on the Review Queue, which is a staff screen: it opens for people in your organization who hold festival access, and nothing on a judge's roster row opens it.

To make somebody a judging coordinator:

1. Invite them to your organization as a Member, on Organization settings → People — see Inviting people.
2. Give them a Coordinator grant on the festival, either in the invitation or afterwards on their Festival access panel.

That gives them the Review Queue, the submissions list, the judges screens — able to manage judges — and the category line-up on that festival, and, by default, not revenue and not settings.

This changed. The roster used to offer a third role called Coordinator. It recorded a fact and granted nothing — a judge holding it still could not open the Review Queue or any other festival screen — so it has been retired. Nothing on this screen, in any invite dialog, or in the roles editor offers it any more, and no judge's role pill can read it. If you gave somebody that role expecting it to let them approve scorecards, it never did: add them to your organization with a Coordinator festival grant instead.

Somebody can be both. A staff coordinator who is also invited to judge holds an organization role and a roster row, independently, and neither one affects the other.

Inviting judges

+ Invite judges, top right of the toolbar — or the button in the empty state — opens one dialog.

1. Email addresses. One per line, or separated by commas; spaces and semicolons separate too. A monospace count appears under the box — "3 addresses" — and it counts the way the invitations will be sent: the same address twice, in any capitalisation, is one invitation.
2. Roles. Two toggles, Creative and Technical, at the start of the terms' first row, beside How this judge is paid and Pricing — pick at least one. The ⓘ beside each heading explains its options. There is no per-address override — send two batches if two people need different roles.
3. The terms — whether these judges are paid at all, which of the season's categories they will work, and what each one pays them. See The terms block.
4. FilmFreeway access — one switch, off unless you turn it on, with the line "Lets this judge receive submissions that can only be viewed on FilmFreeway." It decides whether everybody in this batch may be offered submissions whose only screener is on FilmFreeway, and it can be changed for each of them afterwards on their row. See FilmFreeway access.
5. Send invitations.

The dialog stays put until the batch is accepted and the roster has been re-read, then closes, and a message reports what happened: "3 invites queued as Creative judge and Technical reviewer, sending in the background."

That message does not mention the terms, or FilmFreeway access. It names the count and the roles only, whether the batch was paid or volunteer; the terms are read back on Invites sent, one row each, and the FilmFreeway switch on each new row here.

The emails are sent in the background. The offers exist immediately — they are on Invites sent from the moment the dialog closes, and on this list once you tick Invited in the Status filter — and the messages go out shortly afterwards. Leaving the screen does not cancel them, and a message that fails to send does not change anybody's status: their row stays Invited and Resend invite is the retry.

This is the only invitation control that takes an email address. Anybody at all can be invited here, listed in the judges directory or not. The two other routes onto this roster both start from the directory pool instead — see below.

What the judge receives, and what happens when they answer, is described in Your judging invitation — the guide to send somebody who asks what the email was. Accepting also takes them through setting up a judge profile, which is where their formats, genres and weekly capacity come from.

The terms block

This dialog commits money, so it is where the money is decided. Under the roles sits the same terms form the Judges directory uses, written up field by field in What an invitation pays: a How this judge is paid control, a Pricing choice, the season's categories, and a summary of what you have built. Festival pricing is selected when the dialog opens and offers every ticked category at the season's posted rates, shown read-only on each row; Custom pricing turns those two figures into boxes so you can set this batch's own.

On a paid season the pay control works, and it decides this batch. Paid is selected when the dialog opens; pressing Volunteer drops the Pricing choice, the rate boxes and the summary and invites everybody in this batch unpaid — changing nothing about the season and nothing about anybody already on it. On a volunteer season the control is read-only on Volunteer, because a volunteer season admits volunteer places only; paying somebody there means switching the season to Paid first, on Festival settings.

Three things are specific to this dialog:

• One batch, one set of terms. Everything you set here applies to every address in the textarea; there is no per-address override. That includes paid or volunteer, and FilmFreeway access — one batch cannot be a mixture, so send two batches if it needs to be. To tune what a single judge is paid, use the Invites sent tab's Invite judges, or the Judges directory; to change one judge's FilmFreeway access afterwards, flip the switch on their row.
• The rate lines follow the roles you tick. A role you have not ticked contributes no line to the summary. A volunteer batch has no summary at all — a line about the judges takes its place.
• A season with no attached categories cannot send. The block reads "This season has no submission categories yet." and the send is refused — "Pick at least one category. Pay follows the categories these judges file on." Attach a category to the season first. That holds for a volunteer batch too: the categories are the scope, whether or not they carry money.

Everybody invited from here is scoped to the categories you ticked, which has a consequence worth knowing: a category attached to the season later is outside that set, and outside their rates. See Two ways to end up with unpriced work. A volunteer batch is not exposed to it — nothing about their work is priced in the first place.

The other ways onto this roster

Three other routes put people here, and none of them is this dialog.

The Judges directory can put somebody on this season too. It lists every judge on FilmScorecard who has opted into it — including people your organization has never worked with — and inviting from there lands here as an ordinary Invited row, shown once you tick Invited. Three differences worth knowing:

• A directory invitation is for one judge, so its terms are set for that person — including whether it pays — and it can carry a note to them.
• It carries the same FilmFreeway access switch, off unless you turn it on — and because the directory knows who the judge is, it also shows you what they have said about themselves: "Judge says: has a FilmFreeway account" or "Judge says: no FilmFreeway account". This dialog cannot show that line, because an email address has not said anything.
• The directory will not touch somebody who already has an unanswered invitation, or an active or paused place, on one of your seasons. It refuses and points at this screen, because resending and re-offering are conversations that belong where the roster is.

Invites sent, the third tab, has its own Invite judges button, and it is the same form with the season already decided: pick a judge out of the directory pool, set the terms, and stay on the screen. Like the directory, it can only reach judges who have listed themselves, and like the directory it carries the FilmFreeway access switch with the judge's own answer beside it.

Accepting a judge's application adds them here as Active, with no invitation at all. Applications arrive on the Judge requests tab beside this one, and accepting one writes the judge straight onto this season:

• They are Active immediately, never Invited — they asked to judge, so there is nothing for them to answer.
• They arrive in the role they applied for — Creative judge or Technical reviewer, one of them, taken from what the call was hiring for. An application filed before that question existed arrives as Creative judge, which is what it always meant. Add the other role here if you want it.
• They arrive scoped to what they applied for — the categories they picked, and the kind of work they said they could cover. This changed: accepting used to put every applicant on the season able to be given everything. See The scope accepting writes, and widen or narrow it here on the Judging scope card.
• They arrive with FilmFreeway access off. Nothing on the Requests tab asks the question, so an accepted applicant is not offered FilmFreeway-only submissions until you turn the switch on for them here. See FilmFreeway access.
• They arrive paid or volunteer as they applied. A judge who chose to volunteer on a paying call joins as a volunteer, and accepting cannot upgrade them — see Paying a volunteer applicant.
• They are paid what the judge agreed to, per category: for each category they picked, your counter where you sent one and they accepted it, and their own asking figure everywhere else — including where you countered and they have not answered, and where they sent a revised ask back. Written into the column for the kind of judging they were hired for. Every category they did not pick carries your season's posted rates, in both columns — including the ones outside their scope, so that widening it later does not create unpriced work. A volunteer applicant gets your posted rates on every category, and is owed none of them. See Accepting an application.
• They do not appear on the Invites sent tab, which lists offers only. Nobody offered them anything.

Judges really can apply now, so somebody can genuinely arrive this way — as often as you post a call for them to apply to, which you do on Settings → Judging. See Opening a judge call and Where these requests come from. An applicant can also withdraw before you decide, which deletes the request outright: see A request can disappear.

What happens when the address is already known

FilmScorecard matches addresses against the people your organization already knows, ignoring capitalisation, and then looks at what they hold on this season:

A judge number is never reissued and never reused. See Judge IDs are one number per person.

One more outcome is possible now, and it is neither sent nor skipped. A judge can decide that a particular festival may not invite them. That address is refused and named in the result — "[email protected] is not accepting invitations from this festival." — and the rest of the batch is unaffected: every other address is still invited and still sent.

You are not told why, and nobody can look it up. See This judge is not accepting invitations.

If the dialog refuses

It stays open with the message under the field it belongs to, so you never lose what you typed.

Withdrawn invitations

Revoked is set from one place only: the Invites sent tab, the third tab of this same screen, which lists every offer this season has out. Withdrawing one there stops the judge's link working, tells them by email, and leaves their row here marked Revoked.

Nothing on the Roster can revoke an invitation, and nothing here can undo one. To offer again, invite the address again from the dialog above — the place revives as Invited with a fresh link, the roles you pick, the terms you set and the FilmFreeway access you set. The Revoked row is hidden on this tab until you tick Revoked in the Status filter; the Invites sent tab lists it without asking.

Revoked is not Removed. Removing takes somebody off a season they had accepted; revoking withdraws an offer nobody had answered yet. The two look similar on the row and mean different things.

The panel says so too. Its Judging access card reads:

Invitation withdrawn

The offer was taken back before they answered. They never had access to this season, and no payout is owed. Inviting them again sends a fresh link.

One rough edge remains: the row menu offers Remove from season on a Revoked row, which is a verb for somebody who was on it. Nothing breaks if you use it — the row simply moves to Removed — but Revoked is the truer record of what happened, so there is no reason to.

The judge panel

Clicking a name, or Open judge in the row menu, slides in a panel over the list — so you do not lose your place to check one person. Escape, the ✕, Close or a click on the darkened background closes it.

The panel opens on the click. Its header — the name, the JDG- number, the email, the status pill, the Leave requested pill when there is one, a pill per role, the scope marks and any conflict mark — is drawn from the row you pressed, and the four tabs under it work at once. The record behind the tabs arrives just behind, and until it does the tab you are on shows placeholder bars in its own shape. Reopening a judge you have already looked at this sitting is instant: their record is still in your browser, and if it has been sitting there a while it is quietly re-read behind what you are reading.

It keeps up while it stands open. The header follows the roster, and the record behind the tabs is re-read on the same rhythm — about once a minute while the tab is in front of you, and whenever you come back to it — so a scorecard the judge files while you are reading appears on the Scorecards tab and in the Progress tiles without your closing anything. See The roster keeps itself up to date.

Under the header, four tabs: Progress, Scorecards, Pricing and Access — and a fifth, Information, for a judge with a public profile in the judge directory. It shows what the directory's Profile tab shows: bio and credits, genres, languages, availability, compensation, judge type, FilmFreeway account and on-time rate. A judge who is not listed in the directory has no Information tab — their profile is theirs to share, and they have not shared it. It appears once the record arrives, after the other four.

All the tabs stay loaded while the panel is open, so switching to check a date does not throw away a half-finished edit. Opening a different judge does — a draft you never saved is discarded when you move on.

Pricing sits before Access on purpose: it is a reading, and Access is a set of editors, so checking what somebody is paid should not mean walking past the roles editor to get there.

When the record cannot be shown

"This judge is no longer on the roster." Their record was deleted while you had the panel open — a colleague's Delete record — so there is nothing left to read. The roster re-reads itself as it happens and the row leaves with it; the header empties, because the row it was drawn from has gone. Close the panel. A judge merely removed from the season is not this case: their row and their record both stay, and the panel simply reads Removed.

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

Progress

Four tiles with real numbers: Awaiting review, Flagged, Returned and Approved — this judge's filed scorecards this season, counted by where each one stands in the Review Queue. They are the same four states the queue's own pills wear, and a count that is waiting on a person is drawn amber while it is above zero. Under the grid, one line totals the work — "12 scorecards filed this season." — or, honestly, "No scorecards filed this season yet.", which is a statement about filings, not about assignments.

There is still no progress bar. Nothing records how many films a judge is expected to review, so a bar would need a denominator FilmScorecard does not have.

Under the grid, a card headed FILMMAKER RATINGS gives this judge's figure for the one question filmmakers answer about each judge separately — "To what extent do you feel the judge reviewed your entire submission?" — as an average and a count: "7.4 average · 5 ratings". It shows only from three ratings up, and reads "Not enough ratings yet" until then. A rating given on a scorecard that was later voided is left out. It is this season's figure, and the judge never sees it. See What filmmakers think of the reviews.

Underneath, Recent activity — newest first, with the date and the name of whoever did it:

Accepting, declining and asking to leave carry no name, because the judge did them themselves and no staff member was involved. The FilmFreeway line does not say which way the switch went — the switch itself says where it stands now, and the line says when it last moved and who moved it. The foot of the list says who can read it: "Activity is kept for the season and is visible to admins and coordinators only."

Nothing else a judge does in their own profile is recorded here. Setting up a profile, changing formats, uploading a photo, ticking or unticking their own FilmFreeway box, pausing their own account and blocking a festival all write nothing to this list.

Scorecards

The judge's filed scorecards — the same rows the Review Queue lists, wearing the queue's own marks so the two screens cannot disagree — in two groups. Pending holds the cards at Awaiting review and is open by default, because those are the work; Completed holds everything else filed — approved, flagged and returned — and starts collapsed, with Show to open it. Each group's heading carries its count, and a group with nothing in it says so: "Nothing waiting on review." or "Nothing reviewed yet." The two counts on the judge's roster row open the panel straight onto this tab.

Each row carries:

• The film's title, with the score chip beside it — the card's score on a ten-point scale, to one decimal (8.6), banded in five colours from green to red against the card's own maximum (see The score is the card's own). A card whose questions could award nothing reads "No scores" in plain text instead.
• A Creative, Technical or Press kit pill, the state pill — Awaiting review, Flagged by judge, Returned to judge or Approved — and the date it was filed ("filed Aug 11").

Every row opens its scorecard. Press one — View scorecard → appears as you hover — and the Review Queue's own scorecard panel opens over the roster, at once, with the film's title and the judge's name in its header and the card arriving just behind. It is the panel described in Reading and editing a scorecard, and it does here everything it does there — read, edit, approve, withdraw or restore an award recommendation — for anyone holding "Approve scorecards and resolve flags" on the season; without it the panel opens read-only. Closing it brings you back to this tab of the judge's panel.

Approving from here updates the roster without a reload. The panel's own button holds until the Review Queue's list, this card, the roster and this judge's record have all been re-read — so when it closes the judge's Pending count has already dropped by one, the Progress tiles have moved, and the Review Queue's count in the navigation with them. A card voided under you while you have it open reads "This scorecard is no longer in the queue."

Nothing here says what a card was worth. What this judge's rates are is the tab beside this one, and what their approved scorecards add up to is on the season's Payouts screen, for the people allowed to see revenue — see Paying your judges.

When there is nothing to list, the reason depends on where the judge stands:

Pricing

What this judge is paid, per category — headed PRICING, and read-only. It is the one place on this screen that states one person's terms.

On a volunteer place there is no table at all, only a sentence:

This judge holds a volunteer seat on this season. No scorecard they file carries a payout, so they are owed nothing per card filed.

It says "this judge", not "this season", and that is the point. A paid season can hold one volunteer place beside paid ones, so a sentence about the season would be false on the screen it is drawn on. Two judges on one season can show two different things here.

On a paid place the card carries:

• One line per scorecard type this judge will file — TECHNICAL $4.00 to $12.00 per scorecard filed — narrowed to the roles they actually hold.
• A table of every category with both figures, scrollable, with the categories that differ from the season's posted rates listed first and an amber line above it saying how many: "2 of 9 categories are priced differently from the season, and they are first below."
• A footnote naming what you are looking at. Their own rates read "Per scorecard filed, paid by the festival directly."

A judge who holds no rates of their own falls back to the season's posted rates, and the footnote says so plainly — "The season's posted rates. Nothing was priced for this judge, so these are what the season pays — not a commitment made to them." No comparison is drawn in that case, because the table is the season's own numbers.

Two other readings you may meet:

• "This judge files no scorecards, so no per-category rate applies. Rates are carried by the technical and creative roles." — a place holding neither filing role.
• "This season has no categories attached yet, so there is nothing to price."

Nothing on this tab is editable. To change what a judge is offered, revoke and re-invite them from Invites sent; once they have accepted, a figure on this table never changes. What can be added is a rate for a category they had none for — by adding it to their scope, which asks for it, or by attaching a new category to the season. See Judging scope.

Access

Five cards: Roles, Judging scope, FilmFreeway, Account and Judging access.

Roles is where roles are read and changed — see Changing roles.

Judging scope is the scope card — the same editor that used to sit on the panel's Assignments tab, unchanged in what it does. See Judging scope.

FilmFreeway holds the same switch as the judge's row — the two are one control, and flipping either moves both — beside the line "Lets this judge receive submissions that can only be viewed on FilmFreeway." Under it, one read-only line says what the judge has said about themselves: "Judge says: has a FilmFreeway account" or "Judge says: no FilmFreeway account". That line is theirs and you cannot change it; the switch is yours and it is what decides. It sits between scope and Account because, like scope, it decides what work can reach this judge. See FilmFreeway access.

Account is read-only — Email, Judge ID, Roles, Status, Invited, Accepted ("Not accepted" rather than a dash when they have not) and Last active, which is the date of their newest scorecard filing, or "No filings yet". It is also where a conflict is spelled out, and it carries the standing rule: "Judges never see each other's scores, identities, or a submission total."

Nothing else from the judge's own profile is on this tab — the "Judge says" line on the FilmFreeway card is the one thing it shows you. No formats, no genres, no capacity, no photo, no sign of where they are, and no sign that they have paused their own account. See What a judge's profile holds.

Judging access names where they stand and offers the one action that fits:

Below a divider sits the amber Remove from season — or Delete record, once they are already off — with the consequence written underneath it. See Taking somebody off the season.

Changing roles

Two ways in, both landing in the same editor: Change roles in the row menu, which opens the panel straight onto Access with the editor open, or Change roles on the Access tab.

• Tick and untick. At least one role must stay: emptying the list marks the box and reads "Pick at least one role. A judge cannot be left without one.", and Save stays greyed.
• An amber note appears describing what saving will change, one sentence for roles added and one for roles removed. It is absent while the draft matches what is saved.
• Save roles stays greyed until the set actually differs. Reopening the editor and saving the same thing writes nothing.
• Save holds until the roster and this judge's record have been re-read, then the editor closes and a quiet "Saved just now by your name" sits beside the Change roles button. It lasts for the rest of your visit only and is gone after a reload — FilmScorecard does not record who last changed a role, so on a fresh open there is nothing true to say.
• A colleague's change reaches an open editor. The roster re-reads itself while the editor stands, so if somebody else saves this judge's roles while you have it open and have not ticked anything, the editor adopts their set and stays clean. If you have ticked something, your draft is kept and Save roles stays live — measured against what they saved, so the amber note now describes the difference from their set, not from the one you started with.

Those amber sentences talk about assignments being issued "from the next batch" and unstarted assignments returning to the pool. Nothing is assigned on FilmScorecard, so read them as describing what the change means for the judge's queue rather than a batch that runs.

Adding a role does not add a rate. Every rate a judge holds names both a technical and a creative figure, whichever roles they were invited with, so adding the other scorecard role pays them at a figure that was already agreed — one they were never shown. Check it on the Pricing tab before you widen somebody's role. For a judge who arrived from an open-call application, that other figure is your season's posted rate — never the number they negotiated for the kind of judging they applied for.

Adding a role to a volunteer place adds no money either, and cannot: the place pays nothing whatever roles it holds, and the only way to change that is a fresh invitation.

Roles and scope are also what the Invites sent tab's Role and Categories columns report — both are read straight off the roster row, so changing them here changes what that tab says. It also changes the Your offer column, because that span covers only the rates the judge will actually file — though on a volunteer place that cell reads Volunteer, no payout whatever the roles are.

Judging scope

Scope is what a judge may be given: it narrows which of the season's submissions their queue can offer them. The card lives on the Access tab of their panel, headed Judging scope.

Change scope opens two questions, saved together with one Save scope:

1. Submission type — All types, Films only, Screenplays only, each with the number of this season's submissions of that type beside it. A zero is shown, not hidden: knowing there are no screenplays before you scope somebody to screenplays is useful.
2. Categories — All categories, or Specific categories, which opens a searchable list of the season's categories with the number of submissions in each. Select all becomes Select these once a search narrows the list, and means it.

"All categories" and "every category ticked" are not the same promise. All categories includes categories added to the season next week; specific categories never does. That is why it is a real choice rather than a shortcut for ticking everything.

Widening a scope asks for a rate

For a judge who has accepted a paid place and is Active or Paused, adding a category asks what it pays them. Tick a category — or switch to All categories — and a Rates block appears under the list, one row per category you are adding:

• A category they have no rate for shows a box per role they file — Creative, Technical, or both — filled in with the season's posted price. Change it if you agreed something else. It must be above $0.00: a box at zero reads "A paid category cannot sit at $0.00. Set a rate above zero." and Save scope stays greyed.
• A category they already have a rate for shows it, read-only — "$8.00 per scorecard, set when they accepted" for a category the season already had when they accepted, or "$8.00 per scorecard" for one attached since. A rate, once written, never changes.

Save scope saves the scope and the new rates together, and the rates are fixed at once. Nothing they file in an added category is unpriced.

Three places that are not asked:

• A volunteer place. It shows no rates: its scorecards are recorded at $0.00, a real price, for every category it is ever scoped to.
• A judge who has not accepted yet. An unanswered invitation holds rates for exactly the categories it named, and the editor asks for none — so widening an invited judge puts them onto categories with no rate. Widen them after they accept, or revoke and re-invite over the wider list. See Two ways to end up with unpriced work.
• A judge holding neither filing role, who earns nothing per scorecard.

A judge accepted from an open-call application usually needs no new rate. Accepting priced every category the season held at that moment, so widening them into one of those shows its rate read-only.

Taking categories away

Before a save that removes categories, the editor says what the judge keeps, in amber:

Ada Reyes keeps 3 filed scorecards in Drama Film and Comedy and can finish 1 film they are holding.

• They are offered no new films from a removed category.
• A film they are holding in it can still be finished, creative or technical, and it is paid at their agreed rate.
• Filed and approved scorecards, and what they have earned, never move.

What the judge is told

Every save that adds or removes categories for a judge who has accepted — Active or Paused — sends them one email and one line in their inbox, headed "Your categories changed", covering the whole save:

• "You can now judge Drama Film at $8.00 per scorecard." — with no figure for a volunteer.
• "You no longer judge Comedy. Scorecards you filed there are unchanged."

There is nothing for them to accept. The change applies at once. A save that changes only the submission type sends nothing, and so does any change to a judge who has not accepted yet.

Attaching a category to the season tells them too: every accepted paid judge on All categories is given its posted price and the same email and inbox line. See Judge pay.

Reading the card and the editor

The card reads the saved answer back as one line — "Every category, films and screenplays", "Documentary Feature only, screenplays only", "4 of 9 categories, films and screenplays" — with a note underneath:

• Narrowed: "This judge is only assigned submissions inside this scope. Categories added to the season later are not included."
• Not narrowed: "This judge can be assigned any submission in the season, including categories added later."

Three things about the editor:

• Save scope stays greyed until something changes, and picking Specific categories with nothing ticked is refused: "Pick at least one category, or switch back to all categories." It never quietly falls back to all.
• An amber note appears once your draft differs: "Saving changes which submissions this judge can be assigned. Work already filed is kept and stays counted."
• A colleague's change reaches an open editor, exactly as with roles: an editor you have not touched adopts a scope somebody else saves while it stands; one you have touched keeps your draft, and Save scope stays live against their saved answer.

Every judge on the roster can be scoped. Change scope used to be greyed for one kind of judge — a coordinator-only one — and that role no longer exists, so the button is now live on every row.

On the roster, a narrowed scope shows as small marks under the name: the type, and up to two category names followed by "+3". Hover the category mark for the full list. They are absent entirely for a judge whose scope has not been narrowed.

Every judge invited from an invite dialog arrives narrowed, even when every category was picked, and so does a judge accepted from an open-call application — their marks are the categories they asked for, and the work type they said they could cover. Scope marks are the ordinary state on this roster rather than the exception. The one accepted applicant who arrives on every category is one whose picks were all detached from the season before you accepted — see One category that went missing.

Scope is yours; the judge's own formats and genres are theirs. The two are separate answers to different questions, and the judge's preferences do not appear in this editor. See What a judge's profile holds.

FilmFreeway access

Some submissions can only be watched on FilmFreeway: the only screener link on their record is a FilmFreeway one, and FilmFreeway lets a festival decide, judge by judge, who may open its screeners. FilmFreeway access on this roster is your record of that decision for one judge on one season, and it is what decides whether such a submission is offered to them at all.

It is a switch, in two places that are the same control:

• The FilmFreeway column, on every row.
• The FilmFreeway card on the Access tab of the judge's panel, between Judging scope and Account — see Access.

Flip either and both move. It moves the moment you press it — no dialog, no Save button, no confirmation — and the save follows behind; it is the one control on this screen that works that way. See If something is refused for what happens when the save does not land.

What the switch decides, for that judge on this season:

• On — a submission whose only screener is on FilmFreeway is in their queue like any other, subject to every other rule in How the judging queue works.
• Off — such a submission is not offered to them. It is not ranked last and it is not saved for later: it is out of their queue and out of their counts, and nothing on their screen says so. Every other submission — one with a screener anywhere else, or with no screener link at all — is unaffected.

Off is where every judge starts. Every invitation writes the switch as it was set in the invite dialog — off unless you turned it on — and a judge accepted from an open-call application arrives with it off, because nothing on the Requests tab asks. It is per season, not per judge: the same person invited to next year's season starts at off again, whatever you set this year, because FilmFreeway grants its access festival by festival.

Turning it on while a judge is working brings the films in on their next visit — nothing is sent to them, and nothing on their screen announces it. Turning it off on a judge who is holding a FilmFreeway-only film leaves that film with them: it stays on their judging home, stays scorable, and they can file it, skip it or hand it back exactly as before. They simply cannot pick it up again once they have let it go, until the switch is on.

The judge's own answer is a different thing

Every judge answers I have a FilmFreeway account on their own profile. That answer decides nothing about their queue — this changed: it used to be the gate, and you had no way to open or close it. It is now shown to you as information, in the places where you are about to decide:

• On the FilmFreeway card of their panel, as "Judge says: has a FilmFreeway account" or "Judge says: no FilmFreeway account".
• In the two invite dialogs that know who the judge is — the Judges directory and the Invites sent tab's Invite judges — beside the switch. The email batch dialog on this screen cannot show it, because an address has not said anything.
• In the judges directory's profile panel, as a FilmFreeway account cell reading Yes or No, for judges who have listed themselves.

It is never on the row, and the switch is never pre-set from it: a judge who says they have an account arrives with the switch off like everybody else, because what they have and what your festival has granted them are two different facts. A judge who has not set up a profile at all reads "Judge says: no FilmFreeway account". The handle they may have typed is shown nowhere.

Read the line before you flip the switch. Turning access on for a judge who says they have no account puts films in their queue that they cannot open; turning it on for a judge who says they have one — and to whom you have given access on FilmFreeway itself — is the whole point.

Where else the switch shows up

• The Issue tab of the Review Queue, when a judge has reported a FilmFreeway-only film and you go to hand it back: "This film's only screener is on FilmFreeway and this judge has no FilmFreeway access on this season. The film waits in their queue and appears if you turn access on for them, or you can share the file another way." Sending it back is still allowed, and the film waits until you flip the switch here or change the screener link there.
• Recent activity on the judge's Progress tab records every flip as "FilmFreeway access changed", with the date and who did it — see Progress.
• Nowhere on the judge's own screens. They are not shown the switch, on their judging home or on their account, and they are not told when it moves. If a judge asks why a festival's FilmFreeway films are not reaching them, this switch is the answer.

Who can flip it

• Anyone who manages judges on this season — organization owners and admins, festival admins and coordinators by default, and anybody else given Manage judges and assignments on Festival access, as long as their role can change the season. For everybody else the switch is greyed — a viewer, and a programmer without the permission, alike — on the row and on the panel's FilmFreeway card. See Who can work here.
• On a live place only — Invited, Active or Paused. On a Declined, Removed, Revoked or Archived row the switch is greyed, because nothing reaches those judges whatever it says; its position still shows how it was last left. Inviting the address again writes it fresh from the dialog.

A greyed switch keeps its position, so you can still read which way an archived or removed judge's access was left — or how a judge's access stands when you cannot change it — even though nothing you press there acts.

There is no bulk switch, and no filter

Access is flipped one judge at a time, from the row or the panel; the bulk bar does not offer it, and the Status and Role filters know nothing about it. To find the judges whose access is off, sort the FilmFreeway column — see Sorting.

When a judge is also a submitter

If a judge's email address matches the submitter of an entry in this season, their row carries an amber Conflict mark and their Account card names what collided:

This judge is also a submitter this season: Solstice. Assigning them their own submission is not prevented here — check before issuing work.

It never blocks anything. It is worked out fresh every time the roster is read, so a film imported the week after you invited somebody lights the mark up on its own with nothing to re-run. Staff who also judge are not a conflict — that is the ordinary arrangement for a coordinator who also scores.

Nothing stops a submitter applying to judge the season they submitted to either. FilmScorecard does not check it, on either side; the application shows you their name and email address, and the decision is yours. See Judge requests.

The row menu

The three-dot menu opens with the judge's name and a monospace line — JDG-0001, Creative judge, 3 filed — so you can be sure whose row you are on. The ending counts the judge's filed scorecards, and reads "none filed" until there is one.

Items that could never apply to this row are absent rather than greyed — and that is about the row, not about you: somebody without Manage judges and assignments sees the same menu and is refused when they use it.

Nothing here writes on click except two. Pause, Resume and Remove each open a confirmation that states the consequence before the button, and the dialog stays put until the roster has been re-read — so when it closes the row already reads its new status. Resend invite sends immediately, with no dialog — there is nothing to undo about an email that has gone, and it changes nothing about what the judge was offered. Copy email address writes nothing anywhere; if your browser refuses the clipboard, the address is shown so you can copy it by hand.

There is no menu item for a leave request. Removing them is the resolution, and it is already on the menu. And none for FilmFreeway access — that is the switch on the row itself.

Pausing and resuming

Pause judging access is offered on an Active judge only, and always confirms:

Their assignments are hidden until you resume. They keep account access and can still see their own filed work.

Resume judging access is offered on a Paused judge only:

Their assignments become visible again. Nothing else changes.

A paused judge can still sign in, and their own Judging page tells them plainly: "Your judging access is paused. The festival can resume it."

An invited judge cannot be paused — there is nothing yet to hide. To stop an invitation you have not had an answer to, remove them — or withdraw the offer from Invites sent, which tells them why.

The judge's own pause is a different thing

A judge can pause new assignments for themselves, from their own account screen, across every festival they judge for at once. It is not this control and you cannot lift it.

• Their row here still reads Active. Nothing on this screen shows it.
• They are offered no new films anywhere until they resume, while any work already in hand stays with them.
• You are emailed once when it starts, and not at all when it ends.
• Their card in the judges directory reads "Paused, not taking new work".

Resuming your own pause does not clear theirs, and theirs does not clear yours. See A paused judge.

Taking somebody off the season

Remove from season

Offered on anybody who holds a place on this season, whatever their status. It confirms:

Nothing has been filed, so nothing is kept. The invite is withdrawn and they lose access to this season immediately.

What removing does:

• The record stays. The row stays on the list marked Removed, their history stays in Recent activity, and anything they had filed stays attached to the submissions it belongs to. If their panel was open it stays open, now reading Removed.
• A pending invitation is withdrawn. The link already sitting in their inbox stops working and shows them "This invitation link is no longer valid".
• The season stops appearing on their Judging page.
• It resolves a leave request, if there was one. Nothing else does.
• Their terms stay on the record — the rates as the account of what was offered, and whether the place paid at all — and both are replaced outright if you invite them again. So does their FilmFreeway switch, greyed where it was left, and it too is written fresh by the next invitation.
• To bring them back, invite the address again. Their row revives as Invited with the roles you pick in the dialog. Or accept an application from them, which revives the same row and replaces its scope and its terms with the ones their application carried.

Removing somebody does not take away your organization's access to their judge profile. That is decided by your organization having them on a judge list at all, and removing them from a season does not remove the person record. See What a judge's profile holds.

It does not settle what they are owed either. Their row stays on the season's Payouts ledger, marked Removed from roster, because a debt does not disappear when somebody leaves the roster. A removed volunteer stays on it too, at $0.00 and folded into "Nothing payable".

Removing a judge who accepted paid terms does not unlock the season's Paid/Volunteer setting. Terms that were accepted are accepted, whatever happened afterwards — see Volunteer to Paid is always allowed.

Delete record

Delete record replaces Remove from season in the menu once a judge is off the season — Removed, or Archived from an earlier one. It confirms:

Removes the record from this season list. Filed scorecards stay attached to their submissions.

Their roster row for this season is deleted permanently. If they judge no other season, this organization's record of them goes too. Their judge ID JDG-0004 belongs to them across FilmScorecard and stays with them.

There is no undo. The row, its roles, its scope, its terms and its recorded activity go with it. If the same person judges another season of any of your festivals, their person record survives and only this season's place in it is destroyed. If their panel was open, it closes with the row.

What is deleted is your organization's own record of that person — as the dialog says, the judge's number is not deleted and is not freed. It belongs to them, not to your organization, and inviting that address again anywhere on FilmScorecard brings the same number back.

Judges from earlier seasons

Archived is not a status anybody sets. A judge is shown as Archived when they hold a place on another season of this festival and none on this one. Nothing is written to make that true and nothing has to be tidied up when a new season opens; it is simply what the list means. Somebody you removed from this season is Removed, not Archived — the two look similar and mean different things.

They are kept so that you can see who has judged for you before and bring them back in one step: tick Archived in the Status filter and the list shows them. Three consequences:

• They are not in the Roster tab's count, which counts this season's Active and Paused judges, and they are not on the list until you ask for them.
• Nothing in their menu changes anything. Open judge and Copy email address work. Change roles, Change scope, Pause, Resume and Delete record all refuse with "You do not have permission to change this roster." — the row you are looking at belongs to a season that is not this one. This includes Delete record, which the menu offers and which can never succeed here; there is no way to delete an archived record from this screen. Their FilmFreeway switch is greyed for the same reason, showing how it was left on the season it belongs to.
• Their Recent activity is empty ("Nothing recorded for Tara Vance yet"), because activity is kept per season and theirs belongs to a different one.

To act on an archived judge, invite them onto this season — one invitation and they are a live row again, keeping their judge number, and picking up the terms that invitation carries, paid or volunteer, and its FilmFreeway access — or open the season they actually judged.

A judge can hold a paid place on one of your seasons and a volunteer place on another, and neither says anything about the other. Each season's roster carries its own terms — and its own FilmFreeway switch.

Working on several judges at once

Tick any row and a bar appears at the bottom of the screen: "6 judges selected", with Clear selection, Resend invite and Pause judging access.

• The checkbox in the heading row selects every row currently on screen. Once anything is selected it shows a dash; pressing it again clears the selection.
• Changing the search, either filter or the sort clears the selection.
• Neither button is greyed out, and both tell you the truth afterwards. Resend invite only sends to judges with an unanswered invitation; pause only pauses judges who are active. What the bar acts on is counted on the server and reported back:

A bulk resend changes nobody's terms. Every one of those invitations goes out with the figures it already carried — or with none, if it never had any — and with its FilmFreeway access as it stands.

Bulk pause confirms first — "Pause 4 judges?", with "Assignments are hidden from each of them until you resume. Judges who are already paused, invited or removed are skipped." Bulk resend does not, for the same reason the single row does not. Either way the bar waits until the roster has been re-read before it reports.

There is no bulk remove, no bulk reminder and no bulk FilmFreeway switch. The two pipeline tabs have bulk bars of their own, with their own verbs — see Selecting rows.

Judge IDs and judge profiles

Judge IDs are one number per person

A JDG- number belongs to a judge, not to your organization. One person is one number, everywhere on FilmScorecard. Two festivals run by two different organizations both see JDG-1042 beside the same human.

• The number is tied to the judge's email address, ignoring capitalisation. [email protected] and [email protected] are one judge with one number.
• It exists as soon as anybody invites that address — from the moment you press Send invitations, before the judge has answered or even opened the email.
• It never moves and is never reissued. Once an address has a number, that number stays with it for good. There is no screen for correcting a judge's email address; if you invited the wrong one, delete the record and invite the right address, which carries its own number.
• Gaps in the numbering are normal and mean nothing.

This changed in an earlier release. Numbers used to be handed out separately by each organization, so one person judging for two organizations held two of them, and JDG-1001 meant a different person depending on whose screen you were looking at. Existing numbers were reissued once when the change was made, so a judge you invited before that release may be showing a different number now. Tell anybody who has an old number written down.

Nothing about the screen changed shape: the column, the search, the panel header and the row menu all render JDG-#### exactly as before.

What a judge's profile holds

After accepting an invitation, a judge answers four short screens of their own — see Setting up your judge profile, the guide to send anybody who asks what they are being made to fill in. They give:

• Formats they are willing to review — Film, Screenplay.
• Judge type — Creative judge, Technical reviewer, or both.
• Genres — one or more of a fixed list of 29.
• A display name and the country they are in — the two required answers — and optionally a state or region, a city, pronouns, a time zone, a phone number, a website, credits, a short bio and a photo.
• Languages they can review in.
• Whether they have a FilmFreeway account, and optionally the handle.
• A weekly review capacity and any accessibility needs.

They now have a profile and an account screen of their own, which hold more than those four steps ever asked: whether they appear in the judges directory — which is also whether festivals they do not work for may invite them — whether they judge for pay or as a volunteer, their preferred turnaround, a note to coordinators, a pause switch, which festivals may not invite them, and their notification settings. Both are written up in Your account — the guide to send a judge who asks where something is.

Four things to be clear about:

• You can see almost none of it from this tab. The judge panel's Access tab shows their email, their number, their roles and their status — and one line from the profile, whether they say they have a FilmFreeway account, on the FilmFreeway card. The screens that show a judge profile are the Judges directory — bio, credits, genres, languages, where they are, time zone, whether they judge for pay, judge type, whether they have a FilmFreeway account, and availability — and the same panel opened from the two pipeline tabs' row menus, and only for judges who have listed themselves there, which most of your roster will not have. Their formats, weekly capacity, accessibility needs, note to coordinators, phone number, FilmFreeway handle and photo are shown nowhere at all.
• It is theirs, not yours. Nobody in your organization can edit a judge's profile, put them in the directory, or take them out of it.
• It is one profile for the whole platform, not a copy per festival. A judge who has already set one up is not asked again when you invite them, and their answers arrive with them.
• Their answers are preferences, not rules — with one exception. Formats, genres, languages and where they are constrain nothing and cap nothing, and their Paid or Volunteer answer constrains nothing either — it is a word, not a figure, nothing compares it to what you offer, and a judge whose profile says Volunteer can still be sent a paid invitation, and one whose profile says Paid can still be invited as a volunteer. Their judge type constrains nothing either: it is what a directory invitation's Judge type pair starts from, and you can change it before you send. What a judge may actually be given is the scope you set, and that is a separate answer you control. The one answer that does bite is their own pause, which stops new work reaching them everywhere. Their FilmFreeway answer used to be a second exception and no longer is: a judge who said they had no FilmFreeway account was not offered a submission whose only screener link was a FilmFreeway one, and nothing on your screens showed you who had answered that way. That gate is now your switch, and their answer is shown to you beside it.

Where a judge is is a directory answer, not a roster one. The country, region and city they give are what the Judges directory lets you filter the platform pool by when you are looking for someone new. Nothing on this roster reads them, and no film reaches or avoids anybody because of them.

Your organization's access to a judge's profile begins when they accept one of your invitations, and it does not end. It survives the season ending, survives you removing them from a season, and covers every festival your organization runs — not only the one they judge for. Anyone in your organization who can reach its screens has it.

Nothing is assigned yet

Assignments, as an act, do not exist — nobody issues a judge a batch of films; each judge's queue is worked out from the season and the scope you set (see How the judging queue works). The roster's numbers no longer wait on that: Pending, Completed and Last active all measure filed scorecards, and so do the footer's awaiting count and the row menu's "3 filed" ending. Two absences remain:

• There is no progress bar, and no filter on the Completed column. Nothing records how many films a judge is expected to review, so there is no denominator to draw a bar against.
• There is no progress reminder here — not from a row, not from the bulk bar, and not on a schedule: the reminder setting has been taken off Festival settings because nothing ever acted on it. The one reminder that exists is the Review Queue's rewrite reminder, for a returned scorecard.

If something is refused

One control on this screen is optimistic — the FilmFreeway switch — and nothing else is. Every other change is written when you commit it and the roster is re-read from the server before the control lets go; if it is refused, nothing was saved and the screen never moved. The FilmFreeway switch moves first and saves second: if the save is refused, the switch snaps back to where it was and the message below appears — so a switch that has settled where you put it has been saved, and one that has jumped back has not.

Dialogs and editors stay open on a refusal with the message inside them, so you never lose what you picked. Everything else reports at the bottom of the screen.

A second press on a FilmFreeway switch that is still saving is ignored. The switch is greyed for the moment the save takes and live again as soon as it lands; press again then.

What does not work yet

• Assignments. Nothing is issued to anybody, from here or anywhere else — the queue decides what each judge is offered, and there is no Assignments screen.
• Scorecard review lives elsewhere. This screen counts and lists filed scorecards, and opens one from a judge's panel; the queue itself — every judge's cards together, bulk approval, screener problems — is the Review Queue, a staff screen reached with a Coordinator or Festival admin grant on the festival, never from a roster row. See Judging coordinators are staff, not judges.
• Progress reminders, beyond the Review Queue's rewrite reminder for a returned scorecard.
• Any view of this roster's own profiles. Judges fill one in; nothing on this tab shows it to you beyond the "Judge says" line on the FilmFreeway card, and the Judges directory shows only the judges who have listed themselves. See What a judge's profile holds.
• Judges' names. Every row shows an email address, because a judge's name is not readable by your organization.
• Any money in the table itself — no column, and no way to sort or filter by what a judge is paid. One judge's terms are on their panel's Pricing tab; offers are on Invites sent, applications on Judge requests, and what each judge's approved scorecards add up to is on the season's Payouts screen, for the people allowed to see revenue.
• Changing a rate a judge already holds. The scope editor asks for a rate only for a category an accepted judge has none for; the Pricing tab is a reading and not an editor; an accepted judge's existing rates cannot be rewritten at all, and revoking and re-inviting is the only way to rewrite an unanswered invitation's. Nor can scorecards already filed unpriced be priced after the fact.
• Moving a judge between paid and volunteer. Nothing on this screen does it, and nothing anywhere does it for a judge who has accepted. For an unanswered invitation, revoke it on Invites sent and invite again on the other terms.
• Changing an offer, or withdrawing one, from the Roster. Both live on Invites sent.
• A bulk FilmFreeway switch, or a filter on that column. Access is flipped one judge at a time, and sorting the column is how you gather the ones that are off. See FilmFreeway access.
• Answering a leave request with anything but Remove, and any record of one beyond the pill and the activity line.
• A roster that hides what you cannot use. Somebody without Manage judges and assignments sees the FilmFreeway switch greyed out, but every other button live, and is refused on pressing — see Who can work here.
• Nothing announces what a refresh brought in. Rows change under you quietly — there is no "1 judge accepted" notice and no highlight on a row that has just changed.
• There is no export.