How Judging Works

This page details how the Judging Panel should make their votes. Most contests will have both a Judging Panel, and a Popular Vote. When the Judging Panel is voting, other members will be able to vote as well. Voting is now done within the Facebook App only and not on the site directly ( see a past blog post for more details on how to vote on a photo).

Judges’ votes are tallied separately from the popular vote from other members.

The Judging Panel will generally have one to two weeks to complete their votes. The voting is separated into three rounds :

1. Candidate Round > Each judge should vote across the entire submission album, voting between 1-5 stars for any photos they feel qualify as a candidate for placement.  Once each judge completes this round, the contest’s top 12-24 photos will be selected. Depending on the number of total submissions the selected photos may increase. It is recommended to vote on at least 20 photos.
2. Selection Round >  The selection round can only begin once every judge has finished the previous round. With the top 12-24 photos selected, each judge will now review just these photos and vote on all of them. The judge may optionally add comments to these photos.  This ensures that the top photos get a vote from each judge.
3. Final Round > After the selection round completes, the top 3 photos with the highest ratings are selected.  The judges no longer can vote, or change their votes.  Each judge will add their comment ( if not already) to each of the top 3 photos.