What it is
A per-show toggle that sends judges' written feedback to entrants alongside their result. Most awards programs throw the qualitative feedback away after rankings are computed — entrants see "you didn't win" and learn nothing. With this toggle on, the same judges' words become a development tool for next year.
Turn it on at Settings → Show → Communications → Judge feedback emails.
What gets shared
We send the judge's free-text comments — typically the Strengths, Areas for improvement, and Overall feedback fields on the score sheet. Numerical scores are NOT shared by default (entrants seeing their composite score creates more disputes than it resolves).
If multiple judges reviewed an entry, we aggregate their comments into one email with each judge's feedback in its own block. Judges' names are anonymized as Judge 1 / Judge 2 / Judge 3 unless your show is set to attributed-feedback mode.
When entrants get the email
- Winners: Receive feedback in the same email as the win announcement (T+0).
- Finalists / shortlisted: Receive feedback when finalist announcement goes out.
- Non-advancing entrants: Receive feedback in the rejection email, sent on a configurable delay (default 24 hours after winners go out — gives the news cycle time to land).
What we filter
- Comments containing the entrant's PII (other than their own name) are auto-redacted.
- Comments shorter than 30 characters are skipped (avoids "OK" and "Fine" emails that aren't worth sending).
- Comments flagged by the judge as internal only are never shared.
- Producer admins can preview the queue before sending and edit / suppress individual entries.
Why it works
Three reasons:
- Reduces support load. Most "why didn't I win?" emails go away when the entrant has the feedback in writing.
- Drives next-year submissions. Entrants who feel heard re-enter at 3.4× the rate of entrants who get a generic rejection (per our internal cohort data).
- Justifies your judging fees. If you charge an entry fee, sharing feedback turns it from "I paid for a chance to lose" into "I paid for expert critique." Big retention win.
Disabling per-judge
Some judges write candid feedback they wouldn't want shared verbatim. They can mark any comment internal only with a toggle on the score sheet. Internal-only comments are visible to the producer but never emailed.