Your inbox

Inbox is the row under Next submission in the left navigation of your judging screens, at /judge/inbox. It is where a festival's announcements and FilmScorecard's own notices about your work land, in one list — and it carries an amber count of everything waiting on you, across every festival you judge.

The screen has three tabs, in this order: Messages · Alerts · Invitations. The Inbox row opens the second one, Alerts — the list — which is what this page covers. The other two have their own pages: Messages, where you write to festival staff and read their replies (Messaging festival staff), and Invitations, where every festival's offer to you lives and where you accept or decline it (Your invitations).

The amber number

The count on the Inbox nav row is everything waiting on you: unread inbox items, unread messages, and invitations you have not answered, added up across all of your festivals. No number means nothing is waiting.

It moves the moment you act on something — opening an unread item, archiving, marking all read, answering an invitation, opening or sending a message — and it also moves on its own: it is re-read about every 30 seconds on every judging screen, the Inbox and the rest alike. Nothing is re-read while the browser tab is behind something else; coming back to it reads the count again at once.

An invitation is part of that number now. If the badge will not go away after you have read everything, check the Invitations tab: an unanswered offer keeps it lit, and Mark all read does not touch it.

Each tab carries its own pill: an amber count while something on that tab wants you — unread items, unread messages, or unanswered invitations — and a plain grey total otherwise. The pills move with the amber number, on the same rhythm.

Two kinds of item, one list

A festival chooses who receives each announcement. Some go to a season's whole roster; others go to a narrower group — the creative judges, say, or everybody who still holds an unfiled scorecard. So two judges on the same season do not always hold the same announcements, and a festival that has not written any leaves you with none. You are never told who else received one, only how many.

One honest footnote about what actually arrives today:

• FilmScorecard writes three notices by itself: a film sent back to you after you reported a problem with it, a message from a coordinator, and a change to the categories you judge. The other notice kinds — deadlines, invitations — arrive as the features behind them ship. An invitation does not put a notice in this list; it appears on the Invitations tab instead. Nor does a scorecard a festival sends back to you for changes — that comes by email and is listed on your judging home.

Reading the list

One row per item, newest first, across every festival you judge:

On an announcement, Received is the moment the festival posted it — the day it reached you. A coordinator may have been drafting it for a fortnight; the date they started never appears anywhere on your side, and it is the posting date that orders the list.

Every column heading sorts the list; press it again to flip the direction.

An unread row is the loud one: white, a thin indigo line down its left edge, and a bold title. A read row goes quiet and grey. An archived row is never counted or drawn as unread.

The line at the foot of the card sums up what you are looking at — "9 items, all 2 festivals, any type, newest first, 3 unread" — and when every unarchived item is read, its tail reads "all read".

The list shows your latest 200 items. The counts stay right regardless; older items simply fall off the bottom.

Searching and filtering

• The search box matches an item's title, its preview line, and the festival's name.
• Showing switches between Inbox and Archived — one or the other, never both.
• Type narrows to Announcements or Notices.
• Festival narrows to one festival.

The moment the three filter buttons would run onto a second line — and always on a phone — they fold into one Filters button that opens the same choices, with its own Clear. Otherwise a Clear filters link appears whenever anything is narrowing the list.

Filtered down to nothing, the list says so — "No item matches these filters", or "Nothing matches what you typed" — with a Clear filters button. An inbox that is genuinely empty says "Your inbox is empty" instead, with no button, because there is nothing to clear.

Read and unread

What marks an item read:

• Opening an announcement. Arriving on its reading view marks it read.
• Mark as read in a row's menu (the three dots at the row's right edge), or on a selection — see Acting on several at once.
• Mark all read in the toolbar.

What does not mark an item read: following a notice's link. The link takes you to the film or the screen the notice is about, and the notice stays unread until you mark it. Reading the message a notice was about does not mark the notice read either — the two counts are separate, and a message you have read in Messages can still leave its notice bold here. Every row menu also offers Mark as unread to put the dot back on something you want to come back to.

Reading the email does not mark it read either. An announcement is emailed to you as a courtesy, and the festival's own record of who has read it counts only people who opened it here.

Mark all read marks everything. Every unarchived item, on every festival, both types — whatever the filters are showing at the time. It is one press to zero the inbox side of the amber badge, and it never touches archived items, your messages, or your invitations. When nothing is unread the button is absent rather than greyed out.

Announcements

An announcement's title opens its reading view at its own address. On it:

• The festival and season, small, at the top.
• The subject, then the sender's name and their role — "Nadia Brandt, Coordinator" — with the date it was posted and an Announcement chip.
• The body, as written. Plain text: a festival cannot send you formatting, links, images or attachments, so an announcement is never a document to download or a button to press.
• A monospace line: "Sent to 24 judges on the 2024 Pine City Film Festival roster". That is a count, and only ever a count — no announcement anywhere shows you who the other recipients are. It is also historical: it says how many judges received it at the moment it was posted, and a judge who joins the roster afterwards neither receives it nor changes the number.

Announcements are read only. There is no reply box and no forward — the footer says so, and points at Open Messages as the way to reach the coordinators. Archive sits beside it, and the back link at the top returns you to the list you came from — the inbox, or the archived view if that is where it lives.

A festival cannot take one back. Once an announcement has reached you it can never be edited or deleted by anybody, so what you read is what was said.

Notices

A notice is one line: a title, a short second line, and nothing to open — a notice has no page of its own, and typing an address for one lands on "page not found". The title is a link to the record the notice is about: a returned film's title opens that film's scoring page; a coordinator's message opens the Messages tab; other kinds lead to the festival's judging home or to your account. When the thing it pointed at is out of reach — a season you no longer judge — the title is plain text instead of a link.

A notice can also disappear. It points at a real record, and if the festival removes that record — a submission deleted, an import rolled back — the notice goes with it rather than surviving as a dead link.

The film sent back to you

When a coordinator fixes what you reported and hands the film back:

• The title reads "Solstice" was returned to your queue and links straight to that film's scoring page.
• The second line is the coordinator's own note about what changed — or "It is back at the head of your queue." when they wrote nothing beyond the fix.
• An amber Action needed chip sits beside it until you archive it.

The film itself is also at the front of your queue with the same note on its card, and you are emailed — the notice is the third copy, for the record. The whole story is on A film came back to you.

A coordinator wrote to you

When a member of a festival's staff sends you a message:

• The title reads Nadia Brandt sent you a message, and the second line is the festival it is about.
• The title opens the Messages tab, not one conversation — find the row with their name on it and open it there. See Messaging festival staff.
• There is no Action needed chip. A message is not a deadline.
• The message itself is never in this list. The notice says one arrived; the words are in the conversation, and in the email you are sent about it.

Your categories changed

When a festival adds categories to what you judge, or takes some away — on its roster, or by adding a new category to the season:

• The title reads Your categories changed, and links to that festival's judging home.
• The second line says what changed, one sentence per category: "You can now judge Drama Film at $8.00 per scorecard." — with no figure on a volunteer place — or "You no longer judge Comedy. Scorecards you filed there are unchanged."
• There is nothing to accept. The change is already in place: new films from an added category reach your queue, and none from a removed one do. A film you are holding in a removed category is still yours to finish, and pays your agreed rate.

You are emailed the same sentences. One festival change is one notice, however many categories it touched.

Both notices can be switched off, with the In-app switch on their row on your account's Notifications tab. A message from a coordinator makes no notice here: it lights the Messages tab instead.

Switched off, the notice is simply never created — it does not arrive late when you switch it back on, and nothing else is affected: the film still comes back to your queue, the message still arrives in Messages, your categories still change, and the emails are separate switches.

Announcements cannot be switched off, in-app or by email. They are not among the notifications on that tab, and a festival's announcement always reaches both your inbox here and your email address.

Archiving

Archive — in a row's menu, on a selection, or on an announcement's reading view — moves an item out of the inbox. Nothing is deleted, ever:

• Set Showing to Archived to read everything you have archived.
• Archived rows' menus offer Move to inbox, which puts them back.
• An archived item is outside the unread accounting — archiving something unread takes it out of the amber numbers without marking it read.
• Your archive is your own. A festival archiving an announcement on their side does nothing to your copy, and archiving yours tells them nothing.

Invitations cannot be archived. They are on their own tab, they have no archive, and every one you have ever had stays listed. See Your invitations.

Acting on several at once

Tick the checkbox at a row's left edge (on a desktop it appears when you hover; on a phone it is always there) and a bar rises from the bottom of the screen: the count, one line naming the consequence, Clear selection, and the actions —

• Mark as read, only while an unread row is selected, and
• Archive (or Move to inbox, in the archived view) as the blue commit.

Changing any filter clears the selection, and so does committing.

On a phone

The card runs to the edges of the screen, and the toolbar is one line: search, Filters, and Read all while anything is unread. The tabs are one line too; if they do not fit, swipe them sideways.

The rows stay rows. The list scrolls sideways under a frozen header, with the checkbox and Item columns pinned to the left so you always know which row you are on. The scroll region can be focused and moved with the keyboard.

What this screen does not have

Named plainly so you do not go looking:

• No replying and no forwarding. Announcements are one-way; the Messages tab is the way back. See Messaging festival staff.
• No deleting. Archive is as far as it goes.
• No recipient lists. Who else received an announcement is a number, never names — the same rule that keeps every judge invisible to every other judge.
• Nothing from other judges, ever. Judges cannot write to each other anywhere in FilmScorecard, and nothing about another judge's work can appear here.
• No new rows while you watch this list. The amber number and the tab pills keep themselves up to date, but the rows of this list move when you act on something and when the page is reloaded. A new announcement shows itself in the count first; reload to see its row. The Messages tab is the one that keeps its rows up to date — see It keeps itself up to date.

Related guides

• Your invitations — the middle tab: every offer a festival has made you, and accepting, declining or blocking from inside the app.
• Messaging festival staff — the third tab: writing to a coordinator, and reading what they write back.
• A film came back to you — the event behind one of the three live notices.
• Your account — the Notifications tab, including the boxes that control all three notices.
• Your judging home — the screen the Inbox row sits beside.