Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="BSF" data-source="post: 3331525" data-attributes="member: 13098">Fair enough, but I know that when I nominated myself a few years back to be a Judge, I was in the field with roughly 2 dozen people.  I said my piece, I didn't garner enough votes to be a judge.  I didn't view that as the option of no other candidates being available.  Nor was it really candidates taking turns.  Those judges were voted into position over a field of many.  One thing that does seem to be occurring is that fewer people are interested in judging.  I do see that as a problem because it begins to narrow the field.  The interesting question then boils down to why are there fewer judges nominating themselves?A few years back I wanted to give back to the community and hopefully have fun in the process.  But I knew it would take quite a bit of time.For Gen Con 2006 I knew I would be too busy at (RL) work to do a good job as a judge, so why nominate myself?  But there is another reason at work here, for me.  I have watched enough of these conversations that I begin to see what hassle is also associated with being a judge.  Mind you, I am not implying that well presented concerns and observations shouldn't be part of the process, they should.  But over the years there have been a lot of allegations of bias, rubber stamping, and cries that the system won't work.  I know that if I put in the time it takes to be a good judge, I would react poorly to such accusations.  I could rationally brush them off, but it would suck a lot of the fun out of the process for me.   That mentallity influences me as well.  Why would I want to put all that time into the process when I will have other people accuse me of ill intent and poor handling of a volunteer post?You can't expect that everyone will be happy all the time.  And if you volunteer to judge, you had better be prepared for these accusations.  Right now we have 12 candidates on the nominee page.  We have a few days to garner more candidates.  Will it happen?  Or is the field shrinking?  And if it is shrinking, why?</blockquote>

Verification