Questions about Judgegrid

It assigns judges to projects. You paste the projects and the judges, set how many judges each project needs, how many projects a judge may take, and who may not judge whom, and it builds the assignment. It keeps every hard rule, never broken silently: a project that cannot get every judge it needs is listed with the reason. It evens out loads and prefers judges who know the category. Then it prints a route sheet for every judge, the judge list for every project, a master grid, a conflict audit, blank scoring packets and a check-in list.

School, district and regional science fair coordinators, and anyone who sends volunteer judges round a room of entries: hackathons, student showcases, engineering expos, art and project nights.

In this browser, on this device, and nowhere else. There is no server and no account: the assignment runs on the page, the fair is saved in the browser's own storage, and nothing you paste is uploaded. Save a backup file to move a fair to another computer.

No. A project code and a title are enough. Student initials are optional; enter them only if a judge has declared that they know a student, so the tool can keep that judge away from the project.

Conflicts of interest (a judge's own school when that rule is on, other schools they name, projects they name and students they know), the category rule when you set it to required, availability windows and time slots, each judge's maximum, one place at a time (no two visits at overlapping times), no judge twice on one project, and no two judges from one school on a panel when that rule is on. The assigner never breaks one silently: a seat it cannot fill stays empty and is listed with the reason.

Its missing seats stay empty and the project is listed with the reason, judge by judge: for example that four judges have a conflict with it, five do not judge its category and three are at their maximum. When the rules make a full panel impossible for every arrangement, the tool says that too, and you can add a judge, raise a maximum or ease a rule.

Judge loads as even as the maximums and availability allow, every judge at or above the minimum you set where there is enough work, judges in their own categories where a match is preferred, expertise tags matched to a project's category or flags, and schools spread across each panel. These are traded off; hard rules are never traded.

Yes. The assigner is deterministic: the same fair, rules and seed always give the same assignment. Try another arrangement uses a new seed when you want a different one that keeps the same rules.

Yes. Drag a judge's visit to another judge or another time, or choose from the lists on each visit, and every conflict flag is checked again as you move. A move that breaks a rule is allowed but flagged in red, so you decide. Lock the visits you are sure of, then rebalance the rest around them.

Remove the judge, or set their maximum to zero, lock the visits that have already happened, and rebalance. The other judges pick up the empty seats where the rules allow, and anything still unfilled is listed with the reason.

No. Scoring stays with your judges and your fair's own rubric. The blank scoring packets carry only the criteria you type, with a box for each score and a comments area.

Fairness is the coordinator's call, the tool only applies the rules you enter. It keeps the conflicts you declare and balances what you ask it to balance, and the conflict audit shows what it did, but it cannot know about a conflict nobody entered.

Nothing. Every feature is free with no sign up and nothing is for sale.

Judgegrid is not affiliated with any science fair, science fair organisation, competition, hackathon, school, school district or judging software company.