Hello Everyone! I’ve recently joined a project dedicated to making sure no exemplary judge goes unnoticed, led by Clint Herron, and I thought that I’d write an article to help make all the unused exemplar nominations go towards people who deserve them. Thus, I’m dedicating this article to the subject of finding and recognizing excellence. Particularly, this article will focus on finding judges who are not quite as prominent in the International community or those who lack a strong, closely bonded, local community and giving positive feedback to them.
I’m aware that the Exemplar program is run under the assumption that “If a judge is exemplary, it shouldn’t be a problem finding him/her. Judges should aim to make such an impact that it’ll be impossible to miss them”. While I believe in the general truth of this statement, I’m writing this piece in the hopes of opening your eyes to the idea that some good deeds are worth actively looking for.
Bryan Prillaman stated in a recent Exemplar program blog article that “Exemplar is about recognizing excellence”. He also wrote that a common complaint about the project is that “It is more difficult to be recognized for growing your local community when you are the only judge in it” (in the context of judges in remote communities). This has spurred me to take a deeper look at the process of a judge becoming a public figure through involvement in the program, mentoring , participation in projects, or otherwise.
Excellence is by definition “the quality of being outstanding or extremely good”. If we take a closer look at the “being outstanding” part, it seems as though L1 judges can do great work growing their local community or running large FNMs all by themselves. They can also be in close contact with the player base and do great work with the community in their region, but may not have as much of an impact on the judge program at large as other, more internationally active judges. Thus, local judges may seem as “less excellent” than their counterparts. In my eyes, the vast majority of the recognitions are given based on performance at large events, or through doing great work on a judge project. Although this is not a problem by itself, it does make other work seem less meaningful by contrast. Thus, we have judges that may end up feeling left out by the Exemplar program.
This is an issue, to be sure, as community building is no less important than participating in projects and judging large events. But, how do we recognize great judges who are working in a remote areas, where there are little-to-no L2+ judges around to give them this type of recognition? Let’s discuss why and how you can recognize excellence even when it’s not blatantly obvious, and focus on judges whose important, well deserving deeds often go without the positive and encouraging feedback they justly deserve. We’ve raised the point that excellent local community work is a deed worthy of positive feedback and/or a recognition. Going through all the “footwork” with a genuine smile and great attitude, and making others love the game as much as we do is a huge boon to the Magic community at large, and we shouldn’t ignore its significance.
So, let’s go on a hunt for excellence, shall we? It’s L1 hunting season!
The first place we can find wild exemplary judges is in pokejudge centers small gaming communities with a very small number of judges. With a minimal amount of work, such as asking prominent members of the community, we can gain useful insight about the judges in the community and the work they do, with maybe a few highlights of the things they did which are noteworthy. Once we find our pokejudge, we’ll throw a pokeball go talk to him/her. Enquire about the feedback they got from the players and TOs, then give them a recognition based on the information you collected. If you don’t think their work is noteworthy enough for recognition, you can still write a positive review about the judge via the judge center Judge Apps Review-center™ to help keep the engines running. This will surely make these judges happier and better motivated to be active in the judge program at large.
We can also find information regarding “wild” judges in the Tall Grass stores where they work. The TOs and store’s owner\staff are surely in close contact with the judges who regularly work there, and they know them well. By engaging those people, we can receive additional insight regarding how the judges run tournaments and events, their character and interaction with players, and so forth.
The third and final way to collect information about these type of judges is via a pokejudgedex survey created specifically for this task. Constructing and distributing a short survey in the region’s Facebook (or other social media) group can give us a ton of information. This approach may seem direct (because it is), but I think that creating an opportunity to let L1s review other L1s is a win on two fronts: First, they become more involved in the judge program by writing reviews about each other. Second, any positive review given can be transferred to the reviewed L1 to help motivate him/her further.
The survey should also contain a list of links so the judges can post their reviews in the judge center as well, and motivate them to become more active in the community via the Facebook page and JudgeApps.
Here’s a really cool example by L2 judge Darren Horve for helping judges grow: he and his wife (Laura Horve
, L1 – аuthor of this great idea!) opened a Facebook group for an area with the L1s, L2s and the local TOs. In this scenario, the L1s are the target demographic, the L2s have open slots for recognition, and TOs work closely with the judges and are able to give insight on their work. I’ll let him speak for himself: “What I think is good about this (idea) is that even if there are no L2+ with open slots for Exemplar recognition, there is still a chance for those outlying judges to receive some form of recognition. The Exemplar program is, itself, NOT a platform for Judge Foils but for peer recognition and this Facebook group allows for that as well. The outlying judges get the social/peer recognition immediately. And if they get an Exemplar out of it – bonus!”
Sounds pretty good to me! And there are obviously other solutions out there, waiting to be found.
In the end, our goal should be to make more L1 judges active in the judge community.
The solutions which I described above require quite a bit of work, and they only provide a band-aid for this problem. In proper tradition of closure, I want to go back to the current viewpoint of the program, and urge judges to help us find excellent L1s. Each solution should also come with a heartwarming welcome to the community, and an invitation for the judge to write about what cool stuff they or their peers have done. This way the judge in question’s actions will be clearer for the community and for the judges who want to praise their work. It is much easier to find a judge from a small community when she writes about the awesome prerelease which she ran in which a really cool combo won the day and a few hard questions were given a great answer. This way the judges will become more active and each action which they’ll write about may receive a proper response.
I hope that this article can lead a discussion regarding those judges and maybe give some initial ideas how to find them. L1s are a major part of our judge community, and many of them aren’t necessarily in direct contact with L2s and up. It is vital that we keep these judges engaged in the program and give them positive feedback, so that the Exemplar nominations don’t become, in their eyes, biased popularity contests they’ll never win just because they live in a remote area. I think you’ll agree that giving positive feedback is extremely important so get out there and FIND EXCELLENCE!
Edited by Uri Hershkovitz, additional editing by Georgi Benev
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