Judges' Clerk Tasks

What is a judges' clerk? What does this person do? Is this a common position for a judging panel to have? Stephen Tang

Andrew T Trembley, a costumer who has helped to judge masquerades and run a few them replies.

A Judges' clerk is someone assigned to the judging panel who essentially acts as a secretary. The clerk should do his or her best to not influence the judges' deliberations, and doesn't have a "vote."

It's the clerk's responsibility to keep track of all official judging paperwork, photographs, and documentation for the judges. In workmanship judging, this often also means keeping the folio of judging packets and making sure the right one is ready for the judges when someone checks in for workmanship judging.

It's also the clerk's responsibility to keep the judges appraised of passing time [during the decision process]. I usually go with notifications for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 40, 50, 60 and then every 5 after that.

And, of course, it's the clerk's job to get quick rulings from the masquerade director if the judges think something they saw might be a rules violation.

Every judging panel should have a clerk. That means one clerk for presentation, one clerk for workmanship. If the panels are split (like at Noreascon4 workmanship judging, where Kevin and I viewed novice and journeyman, and Heidi and Carol viewed young fan and master), there should be a clerk for each segment.

A good clerk is really vital.

The clerk may also be the person doing data entry to generate certificates, but I'd rather see that be someone specifically assigned to that task. Often it involves a little bit of extra skill with Word and Excel.

If there is a numerical scoring system (I hate numerical scoring systems, I think they get in the way of the Judges doing their jobs.), there should be separate tallymasters to run the numbers; that's something that gets in the way of the judges doing their jobs.

Cheryl Morgan, another long-time costumer adds another point.

Excellent job description from Andy. I'd like to add one thing.

Given that the Judges' Clerk is the person with the most authoritative copy of the running order and the results, I'd also make them responsible for communicating with the convention newsletter, the press office, etc. You'd be surprised the number of cons I've been to where it was really hard to find out who the contestants were and who won what.

See Also:
Judging Instructions
Judging Process
Judging Anime
Workmanship Considerations
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