Penalisations, Disqualifications & Moderations
If any rules or requirements are broken, the competitor will be penalised and points will be deducted. In some cases, the competitor will be disqualified. The Invigilator will oversee any penalties. If there are rule breaks that are not listed and quantified below, it will be at the Organiser’s, Invigilator's, Moderator’s and Judges’ discretion to implement penalisations or disqualifications as they see fit.
The Invigilator for the video round is Autumn Flame.
The Invigilator for the live final is TBD.
The Invigilator will be responsible for detecting the following rule breaks in the video round and live final.
A Note on Timings
The invigilator will err on the lenient side if there is any doubt.
When timings appear to be in between two penalisation brackets, or it is hard to make a reasonable and clear judgement call between two penalisation brackets, competitors will be penalised the lower amount. For example, if it's hard to tell if a competitor only has between 1m29s and 1m30s of pole work, it will be treated as 1m30, thus only 10 points will be deducted. In the live finals, we heavily encourage competitors to record their performance in the instance where we need to check invigilator’s penalties. We will attempt to facilitate this, but please ensure as a backup so we can double and triple check our decisions.
Moderation Process
The moderator for the video round is Cutie Whippingham.
The head moderator for the live final is Cutie Whippingham. Her focus will be on score moderation.
The assistant moderator for the live final will be Autumn Flame. Her focus will be on feedback moderation.
It is the moderator’s role to oversee and evaluate all of the judge’s scoring and feedback in both for the video round and the live final.
The role of the moderator includes (but is not limited to): mediating bias; ensuring the high standards of judging are met; ensuring criteria and scoring systems are being implemented to the high standard of the competition; checking the scores match the feedback; querying and communicating with judges.
The process involves the moderator reviewing the competitor’s piece and assessing each judge’s scores and feedback. The moderator will also look for trends in judge’s scores and feedback. The moderator may additionally cross-compere scores and feedback with other judges.
If any outliers, discrepancies or inconsistencies are found by the moderator, the flagged item is bounced back to the appropriate judge for further explanation and re-evaluation. The two possible outcomes are: the moderator is satisfied with the judge’s arguments and maintains the flagged item; or the judge accepts the moderator’s flagged item and moderated mark or feedback is provided and updated.
Competitors will only be able to access moderated marks; these are made transparent on score sheets. If competitors wish to see the workings behind the moderation, this can be provided on request.
The process is long and difficult, but essential. This is why we have a whole period for moderating the video rounds. This is also part of why the live final day is long.
