# When a judge pauses or asks to leave > From FilmScorecard Help: https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/when-a-judge-pauses-or-leaves Judges now have an account screen of their own, and three things on it can reach you: a judge can **pause new assignments** across every festival they work for, **ask to leave one of your seasons**, and **decide which festivals may invite them**. None of the three is a request for your permission. This guide covers what each one looks like from your side and what, if anything, you are expected to do. The judge's own guide is [Your account](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-account.md) — the one to send anybody who asks what they can change. **A fourth thing reaches you now, and it is good news rather than a decision to absorb: an email when a judge accepts one of your invitations.** It is written up with the offer it answers, on [Invites sent](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md#what-you-are-emailed-when-a-judge-answers). ## What a judge can now do | They do this | You see | | --- | --- | | **Pause new assignments** | An email. Their queue stops filling. Their directory card reads "Paused, not taking new work". **Their row on your season's roster does not change.** | | **Ask to leave a season** | An email, and an amber **Leave requested** pill on their roster row. They stay on the season and keep scoring until you remove them. | | **Block your festival** | Nothing is sent to you, ever. Future invitations are refused with a neutral sentence that a judge who left the directory would also produce. **Any invitation of yours they had not answered may also turn Declined** — see [Blocking is invisible, including its effects](#blocking-is-invisible-including-its-effects). | | **Leave the judges directory** | They stop appearing in it. Same refusal sentence if you try to invite them from a stale page. | | **Accept or decline an invitation inside the app** | Exactly what the emailed link always did — the status on your [Invites sent](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md) tab moves. Judges no longer need the email to answer. | ## The two emails Both are sent by a background job, so they arrive on the next run rather than the instant the judge presses the button. Replies go to your organization's support address when it has one — set it on the [organization settings](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/organization-settings.md) screen. | Subject | What the body says | | --- | --- | | **"*Judge* has paused new assignments"** | Which of your festivals it affects, that any open assignments stay with them and keep their deadlines, that they will not be offered anything new until they resume, and that **no action is needed**. | | **"*Judge* has asked to leave *your festival*"** | The season, how many open assignments they hold, that **until you act they stay on the season and keep scoring**, and that removing them from the season's Judges screen is how you confirm it — anything unscored is reassigned then. | Four things about who gets them: - **One email per person, not one per festival.** Somebody who reaches three of the affected festivals gets one message naming all three. - **It names only the festivals that person can reach.** A colleague granted one festival is not told the judge also works on another. - **Owners and organization admins are written to for every affected festival**; everybody else is written to for the festivals and seasons they hold access to. **Suspended members are not written to at all.** - **A pause is announced once.** Setting or changing the automatic resume date afterwards emails nobody, and **nobody is emailed when the judge resumes** — neither when they resume by hand nor when their resume date arrives. **A judge who resumes before the email goes out is not announced at all.** The job checks again on the way out and sends nothing rather than telling you about a pause that is over. **Declining an invitation emails nobody.** Neither does blocking. Only accepting sends anything, and that message follows the same rules as these two — see [Invites sent](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md#what-you-are-emailed-when-a-judge-answers). ## A paused judge A pause is the judge's own, across the whole platform. It is not the same control as **Pause judging access** on your season's [Judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md#pausing-and-resuming) screen, which is yours. | | Their pause | Your pause | | --- | --- | --- | | Set by | The judge, on their account screen | You, on the season's Judges screen | | Reach | Every festival they judge for | The one season | | Cleared by | The judge, or their own resume date | You | | Their roster status | **Unchanged — still Active** | **Paused** | **Nothing on the season's Judges screen tells you a judge has paused their own account.** Their row still reads Active, and their Completed and Awaiting review counts go on measuring their filed scorecards exactly as before. The email is the notice; the [judges directory](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges-directory.md) is the other place it shows. What a pause does and does not do: - **They are offered no new submissions**, at any festival, until they resume. - **Work they had already started stays with them**, keeps its deadline and stays scorable. You are not expected to reassign anything. - **You can still invite them to a season, and they can still accept.** A pause is about new work on seasons they already judge, not about being reachable. - **Their directory card reads "Paused, not taking new work"** with an amber dot, and they drop out of the directory's **Available now** filter. - **Nothing tells you when it ends.** A judge who set an automatic resume date simply starts being offered work again on that date. If it matters to your planning, ask them. ## A leave request ### Where it shows - **An amber "Leave requested" pill on their row**, on the season's [Judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) screen, **beside their status rather than instead of it** — an Active judge who has asked to leave still reads Active, because that is still what they are. - **The same pill in the header of their panel** when you open them. - **A dated "Asked to leave" line in their Recent activity**, on the Progress tab of that panel. It carries no name beside it — the judge did it themselves, so there is no staff member to credit. ### What it means **They have asked, not left.** Until you act: - They stay on the season with the same access. - They keep every open assignment and can still file scores. - Their queue keeps filling as normal — **a leave request does not pause anything.** ### How to resolve it **Remove them from the season.** That is the whole flow — there is no accept button and no separate leave screen, because removing is exactly what accepting would do. 1. Open the row menu on the season's [Judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) screen. 2. Choose **Remove from season** and confirm. Their row stays, marked Removed, and anything they filed stays attached to the submissions it belongs to. See [Taking somebody off the season](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md#taking-somebody-off-the-season). **If you would rather they stayed**, talk to them — replying to the notice reaches them. Nothing in FilmScorecard turns a request down, and **the pill does not expire**: it stays until the row is resolved. **The judge cannot cancel it either.** A row with a live request offers them no second ask, so if you agree to keep them, the pill stays on their row until you remove them or the season closes. ## "This judge is not accepting invitations" Inviting somebody can now be refused because of a decision they made. Which message you get depends on where you invited them from: | Where you invited from | The message | | --- | --- | | **A season's Judges screen**, by email address | "*address* is not accepting invitations from this festival." The rest of the batch is unaffected — the other addresses are still invited and sent. | | **The [judges directory](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges-directory.md)** | "This judge is no longer accepting invitations." | **You cannot tell why, and that is deliberate.** Any of these produces it: - The judge blocked your festival specifically. - The judge left the judges directory. - The judge is not open to invitations from festivals they do not already work for. **Nobody can look it up for you** — not an owner, not a FilmScorecard administrator. A judge's blocked list is readable by that judge alone, and the refusal is worded so that a block and an ordinary opt-out cannot be told apart. Do not read the message as "they blocked us". What to do about it: - **Nothing was written.** No place was created, no email was sent, and nothing needs undoing. - **If you know the judge**, ask them directly. They can unblock you, or turn their listing back on, and it takes effect immediately. - **A judge already on one of your seasons is unaffected.** Blocking never touches a season somebody is already judging, and a re-invitation to a season they declined or were removed from is the one case that is refused. ## Blocking is invisible, including its effects A judge can block a festival from two places, and the second one does more than the first: - **From their account screen**, which only stops the *next* invitation. Anything you have already sent them stays answerable. - **From an invitation you sent them**, which blocks the festival **and closes every invitation from you they had not answered — across all your seasons.** **Those closures arrive on your screen as ordinary Declined rows.** They carry the same status, the same history line and the same date as a decline somebody typed by hand, and no email arrives either way, so **there is no way at all to tell a block from a decline** — not by looking, not by counting messages, not by asking support. That is deliberate, and it is the same principle as the refusal message above. So: **several invitations declining at once is not evidence of anything.** It may be a judge working through their list, and treating it as a block is reading a signal that is not there. ## What you cannot do - **See whether a judge has blocked you**, or blocked anybody. There is no screen, no export and no support answer. - **See that a judge has paused**, other than in the email and on their directory card. - **Accept or decline a leave request as such.** Remove is the only resolution. - **Undo a removal.** Invite the address again; their place revives with the roles you pick. - **Stop the emails.** A pause notice, a leave notice and an acceptance notice go to everybody with access to the affected seasons. - **Be told a judge declined.** Only an acceptance sends anything. ## Related guides - [Judges](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges.md) — the season's roster: statuses, pausing, removing, and the row menu the resolution lives in. - [Invites sent](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/invites-sent.md) — every offer this season has out, and what reaches you when one is answered. - [Judges directory](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/judges-directory.md) — the pool, the availability line, and inviting somebody you have not worked with. - [Your account](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-account.md) — the judge's side of everything above. - [Your invitations](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/your-invitations.md) — the judge's side of answering and blocking. - [How the judging queue works](https://www.filmscorecard.com/help/how-the-judging-queue-works.md) — including why a paused judge's queue is empty.