How Judging Works

An entry does not meet an admirer. It meets somebody with a scoring sheet, working through a pile, against criteria they did not write. Almost everything useful about writing entries follows from that. A useful comparison point is this guide, which approaches the issue from an operational angle.

How judging actually works — the sequence from administrative check to final selection, and why an entry that makes scoring easy scores better than one of equal merit that does not.

Scoring, weighting and the total — a point on a 40% criterion is worth four on a 10% one, and the points are in fixing weak sections rather than polishing strong ones.

Who the judges are — the panel tells you how much to explain, which is the most useful thing in it and the least read. A broader reference point is The One Club for Creativity.

Conflicts of interest — judges frequently know entrants, so the question is how it is handled: declaration, recusal, documentation, and a panel published in advance.

The shortlist stage — where most of the value sits, because it is public and checkable, and where a second round begins.

Site visits and interviews — assessment testing whether the entry describes a real organisation, where staging anything is the worst available move.

Feedback, and how to ask — the most valuable output of an unsuccessful entry, available more often than entrants assume, and never argued with.

Why a strong entry loses — six reasons, five of which have nothing to do with the quality of the work.