Hello everyone, we’re back with some more updates that we think everyone who uses the site should know about. In particular – we were worried that JudgeApps users disable or ignore notification emails because of a large amount of traffic that they aren’t interested in, so we’re taking steps to make it easier to subscribe to the specific things you are interested in, like event information and forum posts.

Event Forums

Ever found your email inbox flooded with JudgeApps Event Forum posts that you weren’t interested in? Worse, ever missed an important announcement from the Tournament Organizer in a sea of emails about hotel rooms, airport shuttles, escape rooms, and dinner plans? We know that judges find all of these things important, and we appreciate that the event forum is a useful place to discuss them; but at the same time, we understand that people want to be able to get just the important stuff in their inbox without micromanaging their notification settings.

So, all Grand Prix events going forward will now have two event forums. The event forum you know and love is now just for announcements, and it is controlled by the Tournament Organizer, the Head Judge, and anyone else who is set as an “admin” of the event. Only they can create topics, and they decide whether those topics are open for public posting or remain closed for official traffic only. We’ve also added a “Misc” subforum for each event which is open to all staff members. The JudgeApps Forum Protocol is still in effect, of course, but it’s your place to organize travel plans or other extracurricular activities during the GP weekend.

We’ve made it possible to configure your default preferences for the two forums separately, using your notification settings. The “New Miscellaneous Event Forum Post” setting applies to the subforum (and if you previously chose not to receive emails for Event Forum Posts, we’ve transferred your choice to this setting), and the “New Event Forum Post” setting applies to the main, announcement-only, event forum, as well as to event forums for other types of events that don’t use this structure.

Event Creation

We’ve also noticed an uptick in JudgeApps Events that are something other than a Magic Tournament or a Conference. To decrease the clutter and unwanted notifications caused by this, we’re updating our policy to prohibit other types of events. If you notice a new event (created after this blog post) that violates this policy, let us know and we’ll let the owner know about this new policy. Here’s some more detail on what is okay:

JudgeApps Events are intended for the following two reasons:

• To solicit staff members for an event which includes a Magic: the Gathering tournament
  • The event does not need to be sanctioned
  • Soliciting for roles other than judges (scorekeepers, customer service, etc.) is permitted alongside a solicitation for judge staff
  • Details of compensation and work shifts must be included in the solicitation or otherwise available to all eligible applicants
• To advertise an event primarily focused on Judge Education
  • This includes Conferences, Mini-Conferences, and Area Meetups as long as the primary focus is educational, rather than social
  • Events do not need to be officially foil supported or registered with the Conferences sphere

Events which do not meet these criteria may be deleted at our sole discretion.

Settings to Check

If you’re still here, I’d encourage you to check three settings on your JudgeApps account, to make sure it’s configured the way you want.

• Are you getting Official Announcements from the program? At the top of each forum page is a “notification settings for this forum” selection. If you leave it at “Default”, it uses your global notification setting for “New Generic Forum Post”, which defaults to no notifications at all.
• Do you want notifications for Event forum posts? In your global notification settings, check your settings for “New Event Forum Post” and “New Miscellaneous Event Forum Post”.
• Do you want notifications when new events are created? Scroll down to the bottom of your global notification settings, where you can configure them by region and event type.

Profile Information

As an aside: we’ve added Twitch to the list of social networks that users may list in their profile. This is voluntary, but can be used if you wish to help other JudgeApps users connect with you around the web. As a reminder, these should be links to your personal accounts around the web, and are not for use for commercial or advertising purposes. Additionally, we’d like to remind you that the content on such sites is expected to abide by the Judge Code of Conduct.