Dear judges, welcome to the third chapter of our “Travel Diary”.
It appears that, on a cold planet far far away, there are signs of Program Coordinator activity, and today we will travel to discover what happened in the last couple of months.
Winter is ending and we are about to leave the cold behind us and welcome the warmth of a new spring.
Integrity of judges
One of the topics we had to deal with in winter was about the behavior and the reputation of Magic judges.
Our desire is that Magic judges are examples of positive, constructive and honorable behavior; this goes well beyond the simple knowledge of rules and tournament procedures, as it extends into the areas of customer service and general behavior, and even in the realm of reputation of individuals.
For years, we have been proud of the people we met judging tournaments, and we believe that the Magic judge program is an example of thriving and highly welcoming environment.
This means that some attention should be paid to the people who want to join the group of Magic judges, so that the reputation of the group remains of high quality.
Before people become judges, to the judges of levels 2 and 3 testing them, we encourage to verify that the judge candidates would be a positive addition to the reputation of the group.
During their time as judges, we have a Magic Judge Code and a conduct committee that handles any issues.
On its end, Wizards communicated to the Tournament Organizers about the need of a more official check, which may vary from country to country.
Tests in JudgeApps
The activity of creating the judge tests in the JudgeApps platform proceeds at high speed.
We currently have L1 practice, L1, L2 practice, L2 and L3 preliminary.
New Program Coordinators selection
Every six month, a new Program Coordinator is selected, so that we periodically have new ideas and new fresh energy, while keeping the majority of the Program Coordinators continue their term, to guarantee the continuation of the work being done.
This spring, we will have a selection of three new members.
The selection has been completed and the names of the new Program Coordinators will be announced on March 31st.
The role of the Program Coordinators, which have the goal of guiding the Magic judge program, varies depending on the priorities (2018 priorities).
The selection committee consisted of seven expert judges, with very high geographical, experience and role diversities, with the goal of taking into account as many different points of view as possible for the selection.
End of 2017 judge renewal
Certified judges are expected to be active in tournaments or in community activities, but it can happen that other hobbies or life priorities reduce or remove the time available to judging.
While a temporary period of inactivity doesn’t cause the removal of the judge level, a longer period of inactivity, a decrease of preparation, and a loss of interest would cause a person to be removed from the list of certified judges, so that it corresponds to the people actually involved in judging Magic tournaments.
From time to time, there is a period of renewal, where the actual activity and preparation is verified and the list of judges is reduced.
At the end of 2017, we had a renewal that involved all Regional Coordinators and some of the JudgeApps administrators, and the March 2018 number of certified judges is:
Level 3: 157
Level 2: 1372
Level 1: 4921
(Total: 6450)
Keeping the quality adequate is fundamental to us, and we will keep working on having all judges maintain the skills and activity associated to their level.
… and here ends our third reading of the travel diary.
We also found other objects hidden below the snow, but our experts were not able to interpret them, or were marked as “classified” and we cannot reveal them (the force is strong and we ought to obey), but we will keep working to get you all the information!
Previous chapters of the Travel Diary:
Chapter 1 – Pirates!
Chapter 2 – Santa Claus!