Website Judging
The "Website Judging" subscription option allows you to judge images using
your organization website instead of the Image Competition Manager program.
Eventually you will also be able to critique images as well.
There is a small charge for each image judged or critiqued using this feature.
Please visit our
Visual Pursuits Subscriptions
page for billing details.
Since images can be judged via the website, this provides an additional
opportunity for organizations with Internet access at their meetings
to use a Mac computer for judging, if desired.
Each judge must have a Visual Pursuits account, since that account will be
linked to the competitions they judge. The judge will only be able to see and judge those
competitions assigned to their account. Their same account can be used with
any number of organizations or with their organization memberships.
Judges must not share accounts.
Judges are not made members of your organization, although they could be members.
Unless you also make them a member they will be unable to access the member locations
of your website. Judges are not included in your member count for subscription purposes.
Assigning Judges
To use Website Judging, a Competition Manager must use the Manage Competitions
page for a competition and use the "Assign Judges" link on that page.
This will allow any number of judges to be associated with the competition
with permissions to judge that specific competition.
To identify a judge you will need the email address they associated with their
Visual Pursuits account or their numeric User Id (not their login name).
Either of these items will uniquely identify the person.
Judging Using the Website
When a judge or Competition Manager logs onto your website a "Judge" menu will appear at the
top of the screen. This will only appear for people that have been
marked as being a judge or Competition Manager for your organization. From that menu the judge
should select the menu item "Judging Queue".
The Judge Queue will list each competition that needs to be judged by
the judge accessing the system. Only competitions with incomplete award assignments
will be listed. The judge needs to select the competition they wish to judge.
The images for the selected competition will be displayed as thumbnails
that can be manually sorted or sorted by scores. Drag the title bars
of the thumbnails to change their order or ranking.
Scores and awards may be made from the thumbnails, if desired.
When judging or critiquing using the website it is critical that you have
calibrated your monitor to ensure an accurate display of the images.
All images are converted internally to the sRGB color space before they
are displayed, since many browsers do not support color profiles for images.
You need to maximize your browser and judge using the full size images.
Click on any thumbnail to enter full screen judging mode starting with that image.
The judge can cycle
through the images one at a time and assign scores or awards, if desired.
Eventually this same process will provide an opportunity for the judge to record critiques
of the images they view.
Assigning scores is done differently depending of the range of scores allowed.
If scores must be 7 or less, "stars" appear and you just need to click on
the "star" for the appropriate score. If you click on the same value again, the score
is cleared from the image. When "stars" are not used, a small box is displayed
for entering a numeric value.
Ranking images is important when there are multiple judges. The "rank" is the
order in which the images appear in your thumbnail view. A computed ranking
is calculated from all of the judges rankings when the judges have finished
their scoring. The computed rankings can help resolve ties.
Using a larger range of scores, such as 1 to 7 (which allows the use of "stars")
or 1 to 10 or higher, allows greater separation of scores and will greatly assist
in ranking images when you sort by scores.
Judges should use the button to sort their thumbnails by scores and
then drag and drop the higher
scored images into and order to represent their ranking and preference by the judge.
Be sure to use the "Save Changes" button if you change scores or rankings
on a thumbnail.
Each judge works independently of the others and will be unaware of the scores
the other judges assign. The overall status of judging, however, is displayed above
the thumbnails.
When a judge has completed assigning scores and providing critiques,
the judge must mark the competition as "Scoring Completed". If there are multiple judges,
each judge must mark the scoring as complete. Once this has been done by
all judges the competition changes to "awards mode".
Granting Awards
Awards for images cannot be granted until all judges have marked the competition
as "Scoring Completed". This would need to be done even if you are not using scores.
At this point individual judge's scores can no longer be viewed. The total
or average score (as previously defined for the Competition Type) will be displayed.
If a correction is needed it can only be made to this total score and the person
making the change will be recorded.
Your judges will
need to communicate if there are ties that need to be remedied. Any of the judges
can assign awards at this point.
A system that is better than just using raw scores is to use the "Computed Ranking".
This weights each image by the ranking assigned by each judge. Those rankings
are generally based on scores assigned by judges. This system is
less likely to produce ties, making the assignment of awards easier.
Another option is to use the sum or average score for each image and consider
the "Computed Rank" only for resolving ties. The Computed Rank can be viewed by
hovering your mouse over a thumbnail.
Awards can be granted by any judge or a Competition Manger. The Competition Manager
should only make corrections approved by the judges. Use the drop-down lists of
possible awards and select the awards to be granted. This can be done using
the thumbnails or the full size images.
Watch the Video on Website Judging
Judges should watch the video on
How to Judge Using the Website.
Administrators and Competition Managers should watch the video on
Website Judging.