Forum Rules

• Do not post to the forums about disqualifications.
  Investigations about disqualifications are intentionally not made public. Respect this by not asking questions about disqualifications.
• Post in the correct forum.
  Read the forum description; read the existing threads in the forum; consider whether what you will post is relevant to that forum.
• Stay on topic within a forum thread.
  Do not post “me too” or “+1” comments. If you set an auto-reply of some kind please turn off Forum Notifications.
• Search the forums before you ask your question.
  Starting a new thread for a topic that has already been covered fragments possible answers. Please also consider if it is worth replying to a 6 month old thread (or older).
• Bumping a topic won’t get you an answer any faster.
  It’s also possible there won’t be an “Official” answer, just discussion and suggestions.
• Consider other judges when posting.
  There are over 7000 judges in the Judge Program and this number is increasing each week. There is the potential that your forum post will be sent via email to a large number of these judges.
• Forum profile pictures.
  JudgeApps pictures must be recognizable photos of you – just you! – in appropriate judge attire. Judge shirts (black, blue or burgundy) are encouraged. Staff or judge shirts from any TO, or regional judge shirts, are OK. Street clothes are not ideal, although acceptable. Drawings, logos, illustrations, any other non-photographic media or anything offensive are not acceptable.
• Bug reports or feedback about these forums.
  Please use the “Provide Feedback” form for any bug reports or feedback.

Forum Etiquette

• Think before replying to a forum post.
  Does what you are about to post enhance the discussion?
  Does what you are about to post provide a different perspective?
  Are you about to post something that someone else has already posted?
• Think before creating a new topic.
  Is there already a topic discussing the same or similar subject?
  Will what you post be relevant to over 5000 judges?
  Are you posting in the correct forum?
• It’s OK to disagree, but do so with respect.
  If you disagree with someone’s opinion, or how something was ruled, explain why you disagree and what you would do differently.
  If you weren’t involved in a specific ruling or situation, do not speculate about the actual ruling; do not challenge the decisions of judges involved.
  If you are curious how a specific situation would be ruled, just list the situation without any additional commentary.
• When posting a new topic make sure the subject is meaningful.
  This allows people to search for the topic in the future, and makes it easier for people when browsing the forums.
• When quoting previous posts only include the relevant section.
  When replying to a forum post by email, please try to remove the quoted text, it looks messy and can be hard to read when receiving forum posts by email.
• Read the whole thread before posting.
  Someone may have already posted what you are about to post. It’s disrespectful to the other participants to not read the whole discussion and more so to say so when posting.
  If you do not have time to read the whole discussion perhaps you shouldn’t post.
• Consider Email subscribers when posting or editing posts.
  A large number of forum readers only use email; replying multiple times to a forum post can cause a large number of emails to a large number of people.
  Consider also that there are readers in a lot of time zones, some will be waking up to a lot of emails if a forum thread gets a lot of posts in a short period of time.
  Email readers will not receive notification of edits to a forum post; if you need to correct yourself and it is relevant to the discussion at hand, think whether replying with a correction would be better.

Forum list and appropriate content

Announcements

Official Announcements

Official Judge Program announcements from Program Coordinators, a few other authorized judges, and Wizards of the Coast staff. This forum is set to auto-lock posts to stop replies. If you have questions please ask in the relevant General forum.

Un-official Announcements

Announcements from various projects. Do not reply to posts in this forum, it doesn’t auto-lock to reduce the administration for project members that post and to maintain single threads for updating the same projects. If a post asks for a response, respond as instructed via email or via Contact a Judge.

Recurring Publications & Blog Posts

New location for posting the monthly/weekly/regular notifications of publications such as anniversaries, certifications, podcasts, etc.

Project Recruitment & Help Wanted

Posts advertising for help whether it is to join a project, a one off requirement, anything that needs help (Please do not solicit for specific events or conferences here).

General

Rules Q&A

Got a rules question? Ask it here! Official answers will be given to rules questions in this forum. Threads in this forum are automatically locked pending an Official answer. If you have further questions, please send a private message to a moderator or to the Official reply poster.

Regular REL

Questions and discussions surrounding Regular REL. While Official answers will be given if asked, this is a general discussion forum specifically about Regular REL events, JAR documents and anything else relating to Regular REL.

Competitive REL

Questions and discussions about Competitive REL. While Official answers will be given if asked, this is a general discussion forum specifically about Competitive REL events, the IPG, the MTR, and anything else relating to Competitive REL.

Tournament Operations

Questions and discussions about tournament operations. Questions relating to WER should be posted in Judging Technology or contact Wizards of the Coast Customer Service or your WPN rep.

Judging Technology

Questions and discussions about judge program technology (WER, JudgeApps, etc.) If it runs on a computer, smart phone or the internet and it relates to judging, this is the forum to discuss it. (Note bug reports should not be put in this forum, use the “Provide Feedback” link).

Tournament & Conference Reports

Have a report from an event? Share it here!

Community Corner

Information and discussions related to the worldwide judge community. Share ideas about helping your local judge community; share knowledge about your community with the rest of the world; ask questions about judge uniform; discuss ways of improving your local judge community.

Article Discussion

Discussion of judging-related articles.

Knowledge Pool Scenarios

Scenarios posted by The Knowledge Pool. Want to increase your policy understanding? Read, join in the discussion, learn.

Test Forum

This forum is for testing Forum functionality – do not be surprised if the content is SPAM. We strongly recommend disabling notifications for this forum. Want to test how formatting your posts works, test how email/notification subscriptions work? This is the best place to do that.

Projects

If you are a member of a project you will find the project forums in this section.

Events

If you are selected for an event you will find the event specific forums in this section.

Official Rulings

An Official Ruling is a definitive explanation of a piece of policy and the intended application. These Official Rulings should be followed in all tournaments.

Currently only the following judges can issue Official Rulings:

 

 

By default, rulings made by these judges are considered to be Official, unless those judges specifically state that the ruling they are giving is not Official.

Wizards of the Coast staff can also issue Official Rulings.

Forum Moderators

Forum Moderators are identified by the title Forum Moderator beneath their name. They are regularly checking things on the forum and may delete inappropriate posts or posts that go against this protocol. Forum Moderators may also edit posts to help format for the forum, add card tags, change the title to improve searching for subjects, etc.

Program Coordinators and Wizards of the Coast staff can act as Forum Moderators as well.

This page written by Scott Marshall and Mark Brown