One of the hardest things to be asked in the community is to be asked to judge a competition. For any given competition there might be five or six really impressive entries that are each worthy winners. You look really closely at each entry and narrow down your list as much as possible and go with the entry you believe is the strongest. Once a winner has been decided, unless there is one that clearly blows away everything else you see, you go with the candidate you believe embodies the spirit of the competition and hope you make the right decision. Often times, you second guess yourself but reassure yourself that you made a conscientious decision, and that any of the candidates you had to choose from, would be worthy winners. At the same time, you want to reach out to the people that made your decision hard, as its their ideas or projects that made your decision hard. Having multiple prizes each month makes things easier but if this program is as successful as we hope than picking winners is going to be a very difficult job!
In an ideal world, its the community members, who the community is for, who would decide. In reality, there are a lot of practical and logistical things you have to consider if you were to go that route. Like I mentioned, you don't want to undermine the integrity of the program by having the decision based on factors other than the work itself. At the end of the day, whatever route we go with judging would have to respect the integrity of the program.
Several of you expressed concern, precisely over this. Project14 hopes to be a community member-centric program that's not about us but about you. To ensure the integrity of the program the judging will be in part a responsibility on our end. However, a Jury of Peers and Mentoring is a core feature of the program that makes it unique.
In the comments below tell us what your ideal way handling Judging and Mentoring for our new program!
