And it’s even harder to get it if you don’t ask.

One of the frequent laments of judges is “I don’t get reviewed enough.” This, of course, is only surpassed by “I don’t write enough reviews.” As a community, these two things go hand in hand, since if judges aren’t writing enough reviews it stands to reason that they aren’t receiving enough. It has long been my windmill to try to get people to write more reviews (and to write better quality reviews), but recently I had a thought to change my tactic.

Rather than focus on getting people to write reviews, I’ve decided to go the opposite route, getting people to focus on getting reviewed. On the surface, this is an odd thing. You can control whether you write a review or not, but you can’t really control whether someone else writes a review of you. Why would I push for something that isn’t under an individual’s control?

Having done this for several years now, being a pest and saying “You should write more reviews” only gets me so far because I’m just one man pestering people. Yeah, a few other people also crusade on this issue, but overall it hasn’t gained much traction because it’s mostly just a bunch of finger-wagging. “You should write more reviews.”

Changing gears to getting people to want to be reviewed more adds an extra level of guilt/responsibility to the phrase, which is now: “Please write a review of me.” Now, instead of the disembodied head of me wagging my disembodied finger, there’s a real human judge who is asking for help, and clearly the desire to help others is a strong character trait in people who choose this line of hobby.

Now that I’ve hopefully established this desire in you to get reviewed, let’s discuss the logistics of it. And now for bullet points:

• DON’T ask for a review at the end of the day  (or more accurately, don’t ask only at the end of the day). Good reviews take observations, good notes, and solid interactions between two people. Ask up front at the beginning of the day so that the judge can gather the appropriate information.
• DON’T spam requests. If you are on a team with four other judges, you don’t need a review from each of them. Figure out who the best person is to give you feedback and focus on them.
• DO accept “no” for an answer. When I am a Team Lead with 4-5 judges on my team , I will typically write 1-2 reviews for my team members. I’m going to focus my attention on those judges, and I unfortunately cannot accommodate all requests for a review because I’m not going to write one just to say “I didn’t see anything. Sorry.” (On this note, people getting requests should feel more comfortable saying “no,” because that is better than saying “yes” and not delivering.)
• DO have specific things you are working on or would like feedback on. Communicating these is just as important as making the basic request. And your decision on who to ask for feedback should be influenced by what you want feedback on.

If you want to get reviewed more, you’re going to need to ask. That’s the best first step.