# Judges directory

> From FilmScorecard Help: https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges-directory

Every judge on FilmScorecard who has chosen to be found — not only the ones your
organization has worked with. Browse them, read what each of them says about
themselves, keep a private note, and invite one of them onto a season on terms
you set for them.

It is a **browsing screen with one write on it**: inviting somebody. Nothing
you do here changes a judge's own profile, and nothing here is your roster.
The panel for one season lives on that season's [Judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) screen,
and that is still where roles, scope, FilmFreeway access, pausing and removing
happen.

**It is the only screen left in this area.** The Requests and Invites sent tabs
that used to sit beside it have moved to the season they belong to — see
[Where the other two tabs went](#where-the-other-two-tabs-went).

## Finding the screen

**Judges directory** is in the top block of the left navigation, under
Inbox and above the library and Organization settings. It appears on every organization and festival screen, and it carries
no count.

Its address is:

```
/org/<organization>/judges/directory
```

**The bare address, `/org/<organization>/judges`, still works** and sends you
here, so links and bookmarks are safe.

**Nothing is kept in the address.** Your search, the six filters, the sort,
the profile you have open and the number of cards you have loaded are all
working state: they reset when you leave the page, and the link you copy opens
the plain directory for a colleague.

### Where the other two tabs went

**There is no tab strip on this screen any more.** Judge requests and Invites
sent used to be tabs here, covering every festival in the organization at once.
They are now the second and third tabs on **a season's** Judges screen, at

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

and the old organization-wide addresses show "page not found". See
[Judge requests](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-requests.md) and
[Invites sent](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md).

**The directory did not move, because it is genuinely organization-wide**: the
pool is the whole platform's and an invitation from here can be aimed at any
season whose judges you manage. A one-tab strip is not a strip, so it is gone.

## Who can work here

**Everyone with a live place in your organization can browse it** — an owner,
an org admin and an ordinary member alike, whatever festivals they can reach
and whatever festival role they hold on them. Someone whose only access is
**Viewer** on one festival still reads the whole directory.

That is wider than most screens, deliberately: there are no contact details
here to protect, and knowing who is available is not the same as being able to
book them.

**It is also wider than the season's judging tabs**, which need the
manage-judges permission — a viewer or a programmer who can browse this
directory cannot open a season's Requests or Invites sent tab. See
[Judge requests](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-requests.md#who-can-work-here).

- **Somebody you have suspended gets an ordinary "page not found"**, exactly
  like a stranger, and so does anyone outside your organization.
- **A logged-out visitor is sent to the log-in screen first.**
- **Inviting is narrower than browsing**, and narrower than it used to be: you
  can invite onto a season only where you hold *Manage judges and
  assignments*. See
  [When you cannot invite anybody](#when-you-cannot-invite-anybody).

**Anybody who can invite from here can set what that judge is paid**, category
by category — **and can invite them as a volunteer instead** — whether or not
they can open the festival settings screen where a season's own rates live.
What they cannot do from here is change a season's own Paid or Volunteer
setting. See [What an invitation pays](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-an-invitation-pays.md).

**Judges cannot open this screen**, and nothing on it is shown to them except
their own offer when you invite them. They never see who else is listed,
whether anybody else judges for pay, what anybody else was offered, or that
you looked. What they *can* see is their own card, exactly as you see it — the
preview on [their account screen](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-account.md#view-public-profile) opens
this same panel.

## What is in the list

**Every opted-in judge on FilmScorecard, not just yours.** A judge who has judged
four seasons for four other organizations appears here with all of it, and a
judge who has never judged anywhere appears too. It is one shared pool, and
what you can see of a judge is the same as what a festival on the other side
of the country can see.

Two things are true of everybody on it:

- **They have an account and they have turned the directory on themselves.**
  Nobody is listed because a festival added them, and nobody can be put here by
  a coordinator. See [What the judge controls](#what-the-judge-controls).
- **Their contact details are not here.** No email address, no phone number,
  no accessibility needs, no weekly capacity, no note to coordinators and no
  photo appear anywhere on this screen, and there is no way to ask for them.
  Inviting somebody is the only way to reach them, and it is the invitation
  email that carries their address rather than this screen.

## The header

Under the title, one line built from what you are looking at:

> 64 judges open to invitations. 7 have judged for Northern Lights Festival
> before. Judges opt in and set their own genres, availability and whether they
> judge for pay.

- **The first number is the whole directory**, not a result count.
- **The second counts the judges who have ever accepted an invitation from
  your organization**, on any season of any of your festivals, whatever has
  happened since. Somebody you removed a year ago still counts: it is a fact
  about history, not about your current roster.

That second number can be smaller for a colleague than for you. It is
measured from the seasons the person reading it is allowed to see, so a
coordinator with access to one festival sees the judges who judged *that*
festival, and an owner sees all of them.

## Reading a card

| Piece | What it holds |
| --- | --- |
| **The initials circle** | Two letters. **This screen never shows photographs**, including for judges who have uploaded one. |
| **The name** | A button that opens their profile. **A judge who has set no display name shows as their `JDG-` number instead.** |
| **The line under it** | Where they are — see [Where a judge is](#where-a-judge-is) — and their time zone in small type when they gave one. |
| **"Judged for us"** | An indigo pill, on judges who have accepted an invitation from your organization before. |
| **Genre pills** | Up to three, then a **`+4`** pill counting the rest. The full list is in the profile panel. |
| **Films scored / On time / Seasons** | Three figures from their record across the whole platform. See [The three figures](#the-three-figures). |
| **The compensation line** | **Paid** or **Volunteer** — the judge's own answer, with no figure — and beside it their judge type: **Creative judge**, **Technical reviewer**, or both. See [Paid or Volunteer, and what it is not](#paid-or-volunteer-and-what-it-is-not). |
| **The availability line** | See [The availability line](#the-availability-line). |
| **Profile** | Opens the same panel the name does. |
| **Invite** | Starts an invitation. Turns into a green **Invited** pill once you send one from this screen. See [When there is no Invite button](#when-there-is-no-invite-button). |

**Nothing on the card says whether a judge has a FilmFreeway account.** That
answer is in the profile panel, and only there — see [Profile](#profile).

### Where a judge is

A judge answers **three** questions about where they are, on their own profile:
a **Country**, and optionally a **State or region** and a **City**. The line on
the card is those three written out, narrowest first, with the country's full
name rather than a code:

| What the judge gave | The card reads |
| --- | --- |
| City, region and country | Accra, Greater Accra, Ghana |
| City and country | Seoul, South Korea |
| Country alone | Georgia |
| Nothing at all | **Location not given** |

- **Country is required**, so every judge who has finished their profile since
  this release has at least a country on their card.
- **"Location not given" is still possible** on an older record that was never
  completed. It is not something a judge can produce today.
- **The same line appears in the profile panel**, in the **Based in** row of a
  judge's Profile block on a season's [Requests](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-requests.md) and
  [Invites sent](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md) tabs, and in the judge's own preview of
  their card.

Where those three answers are written is
[Your account](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-account.md#the-fields) and
[Setting up your judge profile](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/setting-up-your-judge-profile.md#step-3--about-you).
Nothing on this screen can change any of it.

### The availability line

A dot and a sentence:

| The line | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| **"Available now"**, green | The ordinary state. |
| **"Paused, not taking new work"**, amber | **The judge has paused new assignments on their own account**, across every festival they judge for. See [A paused judge](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/when-a-judge-pauses-or-leaves.md#a-paused-judge). |
| **"Available from Oct 1"**, amber | An availability date still in the future with no pause behind it. **Nothing a judge can reach today sets one on its own** — the date control they do have is a pause's automatic resume date, and while that pause is live the line reads Paused instead. |

**A pause outranks a date.** It is the state the judge is in now, and it is the
one worth acting on.

**You can still invite a paused judge, and they can still accept.** A pause
stops new work reaching them on seasons they already judge; it is not a
statement about being invited.

### The three figures

They come from a record of the seasons a judge has worked, kept for the judge
rather than for any one festival:

- **Films scored** — every film across every season on the record.
- **On time** — how many of those landed before the deadline, as a percentage
  of the same total. **A judge with no films shows a dash, never `0%`**: no
  record is not the same as a bad one, and `0%` would read as "always late".
- **Seasons** — how many seasons are on the record.

**Nothing you do writes to that record.** The scorecards a judge files on your
season are not added to it, so today's figures are whatever FilmScorecard set
up; they do not grow when a judge works a season for you. Read them as a résumé
the judge arrived with.

### Paid or Volunteer, and what it is not

The compensation line is **the judge's own answer to one question — do they
judge for pay, or as a volunteer** — and nothing more. A judge is never asked
for a figure, so none is shown: no rate, no range, no "per scorecard". What you
offer is **two rates per submission category, per scorecard filed** — or
nothing at all, if you invite them as a volunteer — and nothing on this screen
compares the two:

- **Nothing warns you that an offer is low for somebody.** There is no figure
  of theirs to be low against.
- **There is no Match asking rate button.** The invite dialog resets to the
  *season's posted rates* instead, which is a number it actually knows.
- **The word is shown everywhere a figure used to be** — here, in the profile
  panel, and beside each judge in the season screen's judge picker — and the
  **Compensation** filter works on it.

**"Volunteer" on a card is their answer, not your offer, and neither constrains
the other.** A judge whose card reads Volunteer can be sent an ordinary paid
invitation and be paid for every scorecard they file; a judge whose card reads
Paid can be invited as a volunteer, and nothing warns you either way. Whether a
place pays is decided in the invite dialog — see
[How this judge is paid](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-an-invitation-pays.md#2-how-this-judge-is-paid)
— and the judge sees your terms before they accept.

Read it as context for what to offer, not as a statement about what you may
send.

**The judge type beside it is the judge's own answer too** — whether they
review creative work, technical work or both, set on their account. It is
what the invite dialog's Judge type pair starts from, and it constrains
nothing: you can tick either role before you send.

## Searching, filtering and sorting

The toolbar sits above the cards, and everything on it applies immediately —
there is no Apply button and no delay, because the whole directory is already
on the screen.

- **The search box** is headed "Search 64 judges" and matches **the name, the
  location line and the genre names**, as substrings, ignoring capitalisation.
  Escape clears it. **It does not match the `JDG-` number**, and there is no
  email address here to match.
- **Pool** — All judges, or **Judged for *your organization***.
- **Genres** — tick boxes over the same 29 genres judges choose from, with
  **Select all**, a **"3 of 29"** count, and a count beside each genre. **A
  judge matches if they list any one of the genres you tick**, not all of
  them.
- **Location** — one button holding three lists. See
  [The Location filter](#the-location-filter).
- **Compensation** — Any compensation, Paid, Volunteer. **It filters on the
  judge's own answer**, the one printed on their card. **It says nothing about
  what anybody has offered them**, or about the places they hold.
- **Judge type** — Any judge type, Creative judge, Technical reviewer. **A
  judge who does both matches either pick**, and is counted under both.
- **Availability** — Any time, or **Available now**. A judge with no date, or
  a date that has already passed, counts as available now. **A judge who has
  paused never does**, whatever their date says.
- **Clear filters** appears as soon as anything is set, the search box
  included.

**There is no FilmFreeway filter.** Whether a judge says they have a
FilmFreeway account is read one judge at a time, in the profile panel.

**Searching a country name finds a judge who only named the country.** The
search reads the same line the card prints, so "Ghana" finds the judge in
Accra even though a country is stored as a two-letter code behind the scenes.

**Most counts are of the whole directory and never narrow as you filter.**
"Volunteer 4" answers "how many are there", which is the question worth
answering; a count that shrank would only tell you what you had already picked.
The region and city lists inside the Location filter are the deliberate
exception — see below.

### The Location filter

One button on the toolbar, reading **Location** and then the narrowest thing
you have picked — "Any" until you pick something, then a country name, then a
region, then a city. Open it and there are three lists, one under the other:
**Country**, **State or region** and **City**.

Each list starts with **Any**, which is what it is set to until you choose
something, and each option carries a count.

**How the three narrow each other:**

| List | What it offers |
| --- | --- |
| **Country** | Every country any judge in the directory named, by name, A–Z, with a count of the judges there. This list never narrows. |
| **State or region** | With a country picked, the regions inside it, counted inside it. With **Any** country, every region any judge named, anywhere. |
| **City** | With a country and a region picked, the cities inside them. With either left on Any, every city inside whatever *is* picked — or, with nothing picked, every city in the directory. |

- **Nothing is staged.** Every pick applies to the cards behind the popover as
  you make it, and **the popover stays open**, so you can go straight from
  Country to State or region to City.
- **Picking a broader level clears the narrower ones.** Choose a different
  country and any region and city you had picked are dropped, because they
  belonged to the country you just left. That is why you can never hold a
  combination that describes nobody.
- **Only values that exist are offered.** The lists are built from the judges
  actually in the directory, so every option in front of you matches at least
  one of them and no option is ever "0".
- **A judge who gave no region is not in any region.** There is no "Not given"
  option at any level: narrowing by region drops the judges who named none,
  the same way narrowing by genre drops the judges who list none. Widen the
  list back to **Any** to see them again.
- **Set at any level, it counts as one filter**, not three — one button, one
  tick on the phone button's badge.
- **A country whose judges named no regions shows a region list of just
  "Any".** That is not an error; there is nothing to narrow by.

**Pick the country first if a place name is ambiguous.** Cities are the words
judges typed, matched exactly, so two same-named cities in two countries are
one row in the city list until a country is chosen — pick Canada, or the United
States, and the two come apart. The same is true of regions.

### Sorting

**Sort** offers three orders, and **the name breaks every tie**:

| Sort | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| **Films scored** | Most first. **This is the order the screen arrives in.** |
| **On-time rate** | Best first. **A judge with no films sorts last**, under this sort only — they have no rate to compare. |
| **Name A to Z** | Exactly that. |

### The footer, and Load more

One line under the cards:

> Showing 12 of 17 judges matching, sorted by films scored.

The word "matching" appears only while something is narrowing the list.
**Load more** sits beside it and reveals another twelve.

**Changing the search or any filter puts the list back to twelve cards.
Changing the sort does not** — you keep everything you have loaded and it
reorders in place.

### On a phone

The six filters and Sort collapse into **one button beside the search box**,
carrying a small count of how many filters are set. The search and the sort
are not counted, and a location narrowed to a city still counts as one. It
opens a sheet from the bottom with the same lists, including **Location** as a
single section holding the same three lists, and Sort.

**Everything in the sheet applies as you tap it.** The blue button at the
bottom reads **"Show 14 judges"**, which is the count already waiting behind
the sheet — pressing it closes the sheet and nothing else. Nothing is staged,
so dismissing the sheet loses nothing.

### When nothing is listed

Two different empty states:

- **Your filters exclude everybody** — "No judges match" / "Nothing in the
  directory matches the current search and filters.", with **Clear filters**.
- **Nobody has opted in at all** — "No judges have opted in yet." / "Judges
  choose whether to appear here. When they opt in, they show up for every
  festival on FilmScorecard." There is no Clear filters button, because nothing is
  set. **The Location button is still there**, with three lists holding
  nothing but "Any".

## The profile panel

Clicking a name, or **Profile** on the card, slides a panel in over the grid,
so you do not lose your place in the list. Escape or a click on the darkened
background closes it.

Its header carries the initials, the name, the "Judged for us" pill, the same
location line the card shows, the time zone and the judge's `JDG-` number.
Under that, three tabs — **Profile**, **Seasons** and **References**, the last
two with a count.

**Opening a different judge puts the tab back to Profile.**

**Everything in the panel is the judge's own account of themselves and none of
it can be edited here** — by you or by anybody in your organization. The only
thing you can write is your private note.

**The same panel opens from a season's judging tabs.** A row menu on
[Judge requests](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-requests.md) or
[Invites sent](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md) offers **View judge profile**, which opens
this panel over that screen — without the private note, and with a footer that
goes back to the record you came from.

### Profile

- **Bio**, with their credits underneath when they listed any, and the line
  **"Written by the judge."** Without one: "No bio yet" / "Judges write their
  own bio when they set up their profile. Coordinators cannot edit it."
- **Genres** — all of them this time, not the card's first three.
- Six facts side by side: **Languages** ("Not given" when they named none),
  **Availability** (the same three readings as the card), **Compensation**
  (**Paid** or **Volunteer**, no figure), **Judge type** (Creative judge,
  Technical reviewer, or both), **FilmFreeway account** (**Yes** or **No** —
  see below), and **On-time rate** ("97% across 41 films").
- **Your private note.** See [Your private note](#your-private-note).

**FilmFreeway account is the judge's own answer, and it decides nothing.** It
is the **I have a FilmFreeway account** box on their account screen, read back
as Yes or No; a judge who has never answered reads No. Whether a submission
that can only be watched on FilmFreeway actually reaches a judge is a switch
**you** hold for them, on each season's roster — see
[FilmFreeway access](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md#filmfreeway-access) — and the invite dialog
carries the same switch, with this same answer beside it as "Judge says: …".
Read the cell as context for that decision: a judge who says No cannot open a
FilmFreeway screener however you set the switch, and a judge who says Yes still
needs you to turn it on. It is not on the card and there is no filter for it.

**What is not on this tab, so you are not left hunting:** their email address,
phone number, weekly capacity, accessibility needs, note to coordinators,
photo, the formats they review, and their FilmFreeway handle. Some of those
exist on the judge's own profile and are simply not shown here; the contact
details are not carried to this screen at all.

### Seasons

One row per season on their record — the festival's name, the year, and how
many films they scored on it, newest first. These are the seasons the three
figures on the card are built from, **including seasons run by other
organizations**.

**Nothing on that list says whether a season paid them.** It is a record of work
rather than of money, and a judge's own terms are theirs.

Empty: "No seasons on file" / "This judge has not been credited with a season
on FilmScorecard yet."

### References

Quoted references with an attribution under each. Empty: "No references on
file" / "Coordinators who have worked with this judge can add one after a
season closes."

**That last sentence describes something that does not exist yet.** No screen
in FilmScorecard lets you write a reference for a judge today.

## Your private note

At the bottom of the Profile tab, headed **Your private note**, with the rule
written above the box:

> Only you can see this. Other coordinators, admins and the judge never see
> it.

That is exact. **A note belongs to the person who wrote it, not to the
organization.** Nobody else in your organization can read it, an owner cannot,
and neither can a FilmScorecard administrator. If you work for two organizations,
you see your own note in both. **The judge's own preview of this panel leaves
the note block out entirely, and so does the panel opened from a season's
judging tabs.**

How it saves:

- **Nothing autosaves.** **Save note** and **Discard changes** appear as soon
  as what you have typed differs from what is stored, and disappear again once
  they agree.
- Once saved, a line reads **Saved *the date and time*** — the moment
  FilmScorecard wrote it, not the moment you typed.
- **Remove note**, in amber, deletes it. It is only offered when there is
  something saved.
- **A draft you never save is lost when you leave the page.** It does survive
  opening another judge and coming back during the same visit.

Two refusals worth knowing:

| The message | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| "Write something, or use Remove note to clear it." | You pressed Save with an empty box. Emptying a note is what **Remove note** is for. |
| "Keep the note under 2000 characters." | Exactly that. |

## Inviting a judge to a season

**Invite** on a card, or **Invite to a season** at the foot of the profile
panel, opens one dialog. It names the judge and their `JDG-` number at the
top, and asks five things.

**The same form is on a season's Invites sent tab**, where the season is
already decided and you pick the judge instead. See
[Invite judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md#invite-judges). Everything below the season
picker is identical on both, and the money part of it is written up in
[What an invitation pays](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-an-invitation-pays.md).

### 1. Festival and season

A picker of **the seasons you may invite onto**, newest year first, with a
search box over it. One season is all you can pick.

- **Only seasons whose judges you manage are listed** — those you can change
  and on which you hold *Manage judges and assignments*. A season you can
  change but whose judges you may not manage — a programmer's, by default — is
  left out of the list altogether. See
  [When you cannot invite anybody](#when-you-cannot-invite-anybody).
- A season the judge already holds a live place on **cannot be picked**, and
  the row says which: **Invite pending**, **Already judging** or **Paused**.
- A season they **declined** or were **removed from** is pickable. Inviting
  them again revives that place with the new offer, which is a normal thing to
  do.
- The list is headed "Open seasons", but **it is every such season, including
  finished ones**. Check the year beside the festival's name.

**Everything below this picker belongs to the season**, so changing it clears
your category selection, your search and every rate you had tuned, and puts
the FilmFreeway access switch back to off. Pick the season first.

**Every season you manage judges on is offered, and only those.** A season
where you do not hold *Manage judges and assignments* is left out of the list.
The picker never hides a festival because of something the judge decided — a
judge who will not accept invitations from one of your festivals is not
visible as such anywhere, and the refusal comes when you press Send. See
[If the invitation is refused](#if-the-invitation-is-refused).

### 2. Roles

Two toggles, **Creative** and **Technical**, in one row with **How this judge
is paid** and **Pricing** — **and you may pick both**. At least one is
required. The **ⓘ** beside each heading explains its options.

**The pair starts from the judge's own answer** — the judge type on their
card — so a judge who reviews technical work alone arrives with Technical on
and Creative off. Turn either on or off before you send; Send obeys
what is ticked when you press it. Picking a different season sets the pair
from their answer again.

**This is what the judge's roles become.** A directory invitation used to
arrive as Creative judge alone whatever you intended; it now arrives as
whatever you tick.

**Those two are the whole of it.** There is no third judging role to pick here
or anywhere else — a judging coordinator is a member of your organization with
a Coordinator grant on the festival, not somebody on the panel. See
[Judging coordinators are staff, not judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md#judging-coordinators-are-staff-not-judges).

### 3. How this judge is paid, and what you will pay them

At the top of this section, two segments headed **How this judge is paid** —
**Paid** and **Volunteer**:

| The season you picked | What the control does |
| --- | --- |
| **Paid** | **Both segments work**, and Paid is selected. Press **Volunteer** to invite this one judge unpaid. |
| **Volunteer** | **Read-only on Volunteer.** Nothing responds to a click. |

**On a paid season this is your choice, and it used to not be.** The control
reported the season's setting and could not be moved, so a festival that paid
its judges had no way to take one on as a volunteer. A season's Paid or
Volunteer setting is now a **ceiling**: it caps what any one place on it can be,
and each place carries its own answer underneath.

**It never changes the season.** Picking Volunteer here writes nothing to the
season and changes nothing for anybody else on it. **To pay somebody on a
volunteer season**, switch that season to Paid first on
[Festival settings](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-pay.md#paid-or-volunteer-is-a-ceiling-not-a-rule) —
which is always allowed — and then invite them.

**When the invitation is a paid one**, a **Pricing** choice comes next:
**Festival** pricing, selected when the dialog opens, offers the season's posted
rates as they stand and shows them, read-only, on each category row; **Custom**
pricing turns those two figures — **Technical** and **Creative** — into boxes,
prefilled from what the season posts.

Under it, a searchable list of **every category attached to that season**. Tick
the ones this judge will work.

- **Under Custom pricing, change any box for this judge.** It changes nothing
  about the season and nothing about any other judge. **Reset to posted rates**
  appears once anything differs, and puts every box back.
- **A picked category at `$0.00` blocks Send**, on either of its two rates —
  and the refusal names the way out: "Set a rate above zero, or invite this
  judge as a volunteer."
- A summary underneath reads one range per scorecard type — `TECHNICAL $4.00 to
  $12.00 per scorecard filed` — with the number of categories and the number of
  submissions currently in scope.

**On a volunteer invitation the rate boxes and the summary are absent**, and a
line takes their place. On a **paid** season it is about this judge — "This
judge is invited as a volunteer. No scorecard they file carries a payout, and
the invitation says so. Other judges on this season are unaffected." On a
**volunteer** season it is about the season, as it always was. **The categories
are still picked the same way**, and the season's posted figures are still
written onto the invitation behind the scenes, owed to nobody.

**Switching back to Paid restores every figure you had typed.** Nothing is
cleared by pressing Volunteer.

**A season with no attached categories cannot be invited into from this
dialog.** It reads "This season has no submission categories yet." and Send
stays off — a judge with no categories could never be given a submission.

### 4. FilmFreeway access

One switch, headed **FilmFreeway access**, with the line beside it:

> Lets this judge receive submissions that can only be viewed on FilmFreeway.

**It is off when the dialog opens**, and off is what most invitations send.
Turn it on only when your festival has given this judge access to its
screeners on FilmFreeway itself, because that is what the switch stands for:
on, a submission whose only screener is on FilmFreeway is offered to this judge
like any other; off, such submissions are not offered to them at all. See
[FilmFreeway access](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md#filmfreeway-access) on the Judges screen,
which is where the switch lives once the place exists.

Under it, one read-only line — what the judge has said about themselves, on
their own account:

> Judge says: has a FilmFreeway account

or

> Judge says: no FilmFreeway account

**The switch is never set from that line.** A judge who says they have an
account still arrives with the switch off, because what they have and what
your festival has granted them are two different facts — the line is there so
you can decide with it in view. A judge who has never answered reads "no
FilmFreeway account".

Three small things: the switch **does not hold up Send** — an invitation with
it off is the ordinary invitation; **picking a different season puts it back
to off**, like everything else below the season picker; and **the judge is
never shown it** — not on the invitation, not afterwards.

### 5. A note to the judge

Optional, under 500 characters, placeheld with "Why you would like them on
this season". **It is sent with the invitation email, with your name and the
festival — it does not appear on the invitation page they open.**

### Send invite

**Send invite** turns on once a season, at least one judge type and at least
one category are chosen, and — **on a paid invitation** — no picked category
sits at `$0.00`. A volunteer invitation is never held to that last rule, and
the FilmFreeway access switch is never part of it.

## What sending does

- **A place is created on that season, with the roles you ticked** — Technical
  reviewer, Creative judge, or both.
- **Their status is Invited** and the season's roster shows them immediately.
- **The place is paid or volunteer as you chose it**, and that is written onto
  the place rather than read off the season afterwards.
- **Their scope is exactly the categories you picked**, never "All categories",
  even if you picked every one of them.
- **FilmFreeway access is written onto the place as you set it**, on or off,
  and the season's [Judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md#filmfreeway-access) screen shows it as
  the switch in its FilmFreeway column, where it can be changed at any time.
- **The rates you were looking at are written onto the invitation**, and the
  judge reads them before they answer. **On a volunteer invitation the season's
  posted figures are written anyway**, inert, and the judge is shown none of
  them.
- **The invitation appears on that season's
  [Invites sent](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md) tab**, as Pending, with your name recorded
  as the sender. That is where you resend it or withdraw it.
- **The email is sent in the background** and states what they will be paid —
  or that nothing is. Leaving this screen does not cancel it.
- The card and the panel switch to the green **Invited** pill.
- A message appears at the bottom of the screen with a **Dismiss** link, and it
  names **the terms you sent** rather than the season's:
  "Invite queued for Ada Reyes for Northern Lights Festival 2026, technical and
  creative on 3 categories." — or "…, **as a volunteer**." on a paid season, or
  "…, **volunteer season**." on a volunteer one. It does not mention
  FilmFreeway access.

**No money moves through FilmScorecard.** Your festival pays its judges itself,
as the Festival Host Agreement your organization accepts says, and the
invitation tells the judge so: "paid by the festival directly". The rates are a
written statement of what you intend to pay,
stored with the invitation and shown to the judge, beside your organization's
payment terms when it has set them. What a judge is owed, and the invoices they
send you, are on [Paying your judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/paying-your-judges.md).

**Once the judge accepts, the terms are fixed.** No screen can change what an
accepted judge is paid — **or move them between paid and volunteer** — see
[What an invitation pays](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-an-invitation-pays.md#once-they-accept-the-figures-are-fixed).
**FilmFreeway access is not a term in that sense**: it stays changeable on the
roster for as long as the judge holds a live place.

Everything after the invitation — resending, changing roles, FilmFreeway
access, pausing, removing — happens on that season's own Judges screen: the
[Roster](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) tab or the [Invites sent](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md) tab, not
here.

### When there is no Invite button

**On a card, the green Invited pill means "you just invited them"** — it
appears the moment you send, and only for judges you invited from this screen
in this visit. Reload the page and the ordinary **Invite** button is back,
because the invitation is now something the season's roster knows about rather
than something this screen is telling you.

**In the profile panel, the footer answers a different question**: it shows
**"Invited to *the festival* 2026"** whenever the judge holds any live place
anywhere in your organization — an unanswered invitation, an active judge, or
a paused one — naming the most recent one. Live places are per organization,
so a judge working on your March festival shows that pill even while you are
reading them with October in mind.

**A judge already judging elsewhere can still be invited to another season.**
Use the **Invite** button on their card: the season they already hold is
listed but greyed, annotated *Invite pending*, *Already judging* or *Paused*,
and every other season whose judges you manage is pickable. **The new place's
terms are its own** — a judge paid on one of your seasons can be a volunteer on
the next, and the other way about — **and so is its FilmFreeway access**: the
switch starts off on every new invitation, whatever you set for them on another
season.

A judge whose only places with you are declined, removed or from an earlier
season shows no pill at all — those seasons are pickable again, and inviting
them replaces the old place with the new offer, rates, categories,
paid-or-volunteer answer and FilmFreeway access included.

### When you cannot invite anybody

If there is no season you may invite onto, **Invite is greyed on every card**
and hovering it says why:

> There is no open season you can write to, so you cannot send invitations.

**A season counts only when you can change it and hold *Manage judges and
assignments* on it.** Owners and org admins always do, on every season in the
organization; festival admins and coordinators do by default on the festivals
and seasons they hold. So the greyed button has three usual causes:

- **Your festival access is Viewer only.**
- **Your festival role does not manage judges** — a programmer's, by default,
  unless somebody has ticked the box for them on
  [Festival access](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/festival-access.md#what-the-capabilities-do-today).
  **This is new**: before, anybody who could change a season could invite
  onto it from here.
- **Every season in the organization has been completed.**

The sentence on the button says "write to" in each case; the second cause is
not named separately.

### If the invitation is refused

The dialog stays open with the reason inside it, so nothing you picked is
lost. Nothing is written when it refuses — no place, no email, no record.

| The message | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| "This judge already has a pending invitation to this season. Manage it from that season's Judges screen." | Somebody invited them while your dialog was open. Resending, or changing the offer, is that screen's job — this screen never overwrites an offer a judge may already be reading. |
| "This judge is already on that season's roster." | They are active or paused on it. |
| "This judge is no longer accepting invitations." | **One message, three possible causes**, and you cannot tell them apart. See below. |
| "This season no longer pays its judges, so this judge can only be invited as a volunteer. Reopen the dialog and send volunteer terms." | Somebody switched that season to Volunteer while your dialog was open, so the paid offer on screen has nowhere to land. **A volunteer offer is never refused this way** — volunteer terms sit under any setting a season can have, so they go through even if the season turned Paid while you were typing. |
| "A paid category cannot sit at $0.00. Set a rate above zero, or invite this judge as a volunteer." | A picked category has a zero in one of its two rate boxes on a paid invitation. |
| "One of those categories is no longer on this season. Reopen the dialog and pick again." | Somebody detached a category while your dialog was open. |
| "This season has no submission categories yet. Add one before inviting judges to it." | The season lost its last category while your dialog was open. |
| "You do not have permission to invite judges to that season." | Your access to that season changed while the page was open — you no longer manage its judges, say — or the page you are looking at is stale. Reload. |
| "Running festivals is paused until an owner of *your organization* accepts the Festival Host Agreement." | **No owner of your organization has agreed to the current Festival Host Agreement yet**, so no invitation goes out from any of its screens. Everything else here — searching, reading profiles, your private notes — still works. An owner agrees the next time they open any of the organization's screens — see [Until an owner agrees](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/terms-and-privacy.md#until-an-owner-agrees). |
| "Keep the note under 500 characters." | The note to the judge is too long. |
| "The invitation could not be sent. Try again." | Anything else. Nothing was written; reload to see where things stand. |

**"No longer accepting invitations" covers all of these**: the judge left the
directory between the page loading and you pressing Send; the judge is listed
but not open to invitations from festivals they do not already work for; or the
judge has blocked this particular festival.

**They are deliberately indistinguishable.** A judge's blocked list is readable
by that judge alone — no owner, no colleague and no FilmScorecard administrator can
look it up — and the refusal is worded so that a block and an ordinary opt-out
read the same. Do not report it to a judge as "you blocked us". If you know
them, ask; they can change it themselves and it takes effect immediately. See
[When a judge pauses or asks to leave](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/when-a-judge-pauses-or-leaves.md#this-judge-is-not-accepting-invitations).

## What the judge sees

**Their own terms, and nothing else from this screen.** Not your private note,
not who else you looked at, not what anybody else is offered — and
**not the season's posted rates either**, because the gap between those and
their own figures would be evidence about what other judges were offered.
**A judge invited as a volunteer is not told that anybody else on that season is
being paid.** **And they are not shown the FilmFreeway access switch**, on the
invitation or anywhere afterwards — what they see of it is only whether
FilmFreeway-only submissions turn up in their queue.

Their invitation email gains one thing a batch invitation from a season's
Roster tab cannot carry — a note written to them by name:

> Compensation, paid by the festival directly:
>   Technical: $4.00 to $12.00 per scorecard filed
>   Creative: $6.00 per scorecard filed
>
> A note from the festival:
> We loved your work on the shorts panel last year.

A volunteer invitation says "Compensation: none. You are invited on a
volunteer basis and no payout is created." instead, **on a paying season exactly
as on a volunteer one**, with no figures anywhere in the message.

The page the link opens carries a block headed **What this festival is
offering** with **one row per category and both figures on it**, not the range
the email carries — or, on a volunteer invitation, "**Volunteer — no payout**"
in place of the table. **Your note to them is in the email only** and is not
repeated there.

The whole of the judge's side is written up in
[Your judging invitation](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-judging-invitation.md) — the guide to send
anybody who asks what the email was.

## What the judge controls

Everything on a judge's card is theirs, set on their own
[account screen](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-account.md), and none of it can be changed or overridden
from here:

| They set | What it does to this screen |
| --- | --- |
| **List me in the judge directory** | Whether they appear here at all, and with it whether you may invite them. Off is the state every judge starts in. |
| **Country, State or region and City** | The location line on the card and in the panel, and what the **Location** filter matches them on. |
| **Paid or Volunteer** | The compensation line on the card and the Compensation cell in the panel, and what the **Compensation** filter matches them on. **Nothing in the invite dialog reads it**, and it does not decide whether your invitation pays — see [Paid or Volunteer, and what it is not](#paid-or-volunteer-and-what-it-is-not). |
| **Judge type** | The type beside the compensation line, the Judge type cell in the panel, what the **Judge type** filter matches them on — and the starting state of the invite dialog's Judge type pair, which you can change before you send. |
| **I have a FilmFreeway account** | The **FilmFreeway account** cell in the panel, Yes or No, and the "Judge says" line under the invite dialog's FilmFreeway access switch. **It decides nothing about what reaches them** — that is your switch, on the invitation and on each season's roster — and it never sets the switch for you. Not on the card, and no filter. |
| **Blocked festivals** | One named festival that may not invite them. **Invisible here** — they still appear on your screen exactly as before. |
| **Pause new assignments** | The amber "Paused, not taking new work" line, and dropping out of the Available now filter. |

**Turning the listing off removes them from every festival's directory**, not
just yours, and nothing announces it. A judge you invited last season may
simply not be here this season.

**It also removes them from a season's judge picker.** The two-step Invite
judges dialog on [Invites sent](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md) reads this same pool, so a
judge who is not listed here cannot be picked there either — inviting them by
email address from the season's [Roster](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) is the way round it.

## What does not work yet

- **The season record and the three figures on every card.** Nothing writes to
  them: a judge files scorecards on your season, but working it does not add a
  line.
- **References.** They can be shown; nothing collects them.
- **Contacting a judge.** No email address, no message button, no export.
  Inviting is the only way to reach somebody from here.
- **A second invitation from the directory** once a judge holds one live place
  with you. See
  [When there is no Invite button](#when-there-is-no-invite-button).
- **Any figure for what a judge wants to be paid.** A judge says Paid or
  Volunteer and nothing more, so there is no rate to read, no warning, no
  Match button and no arithmetic between their answer and a set of
  per-category rates — and no check at all when the invitation is a volunteer
  one.
- **Any sign of whether a judge is volunteering somewhere.** The Compensation
  filter reads their own answer, not their places, and nothing on this screen
  reports the terms a judge holds at any festival.
- **Distance, travel or "near me".** The Location filter is an exact match on
  what the judge typed — there is no radius, no map, and no sense in which one
  city is near another.
- **Tidying up how a place is spelled.** "NYC" and "New York" are two cities to
  this filter, because they are two things the judges typed. Nothing merges,
  corrects or suggests.
- **Changing an offer once it is sent.** Revoke and invite again — that is also
  the only way to move an unanswered offer between paid and volunteer. An
  accepted judge's terms cannot be changed at all. FilmFreeway access is the
  exception, and it is changed on the season's roster rather than here.
- **Payments.** Rates are recorded and shown. Nothing charges, collects or
  pays.
- **Photographs.** Initials only, everywhere on this screen, including in the
  judge's own preview of it.
- **Shortlists, saved searches and comparing judges side by side.** The
  shortlist on a season's [Requests](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-requests.md) tab is a status on an
  application, not a way to mark somebody in the directory.
- **Any signal about a judge's formats or capacity.** Both are answered on the
  judge's own account and neither reaches this screen. (Whether they say they
  have a FilmFreeway account does now — in the profile panel, and only there.)
- **A FilmFreeway filter, or a FilmFreeway mark on the card.** The answer is a
  cell in the profile panel, one judge at a time — and whether any of your
  seasons has turned FilmFreeway access on for a judge is a fact about that
  season's roster, which this platform-wide screen never shows.

## Related guides

- [What an invitation pays](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/what-an-invitation-pays.md) — the offer form
  field by field, inviting one judge as a volunteer, what the judge is shown,
  and when the figures stop being editable.
- [Judge pay](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-pay.md) — the season's posted rates every paid offer
  starts from, and the ceiling its Paid/Volunteer setting places over each one.
- [Judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) — one season's panel: roles, scope, FilmFreeway access,
  pausing, removing, inviting by email address, and the Pricing card that says
  what one judge is paid.
- [Judge requests](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judge-requests.md) — a season's second tab: judges who
  applied to one of its open calls, including the ones who applied as
  volunteers.
- [Invites sent](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md) — a season's third tab: every offer it has
  out, including the ones sent from here.
- [When a judge pauses or asks to leave](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/when-a-judge-pauses-or-leaves.md) —
  the decisions a judge makes that reach you.
- [Your judging invitation](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-judging-invitation.md) — written for the
  judge who receives what you send from here.
- [Your account](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-account.md) — the judge's own screen, and where every
  value on a card comes from, including their country, region and city.
- [Festival access](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/festival-access.md) — which seasons somebody may change,
  and who holds *Manage judges and assignments*, which together decide whether
  they can invite.