The four kinds of conflict worth collecting
Fair networks ask affiliated fairs to have procedures that remove potential conflicts of interest, and one large regional fair's judging guide asks judges who discover a conflict at preview time to report it to the desk before interviews start. Both are listed below. In practice four kinds cover almost everything:
- Own school. A teacher, parent volunteer or alumnus judging their own school's projects. One switch keeps every judge off every project from their school.
- Other schools. A judge whose partner teaches elsewhere, or who coaches a club at another school. The judge lists the schools.
- Named projects. A project the judge mentored, supplied equipment for, or saw at an earlier fair. The judge lists project codes.
- Students they know. A niece, a neighbour, a child from their own class. The judge gives initials; the tool matches them to the initials on the project, so full names are never needed. A full name a judge types anyway still matches the same initials, and a judge paste names any entry that matches no project.
Worked example: the conflicts in the sample fair
The sample fair in the judge assigner has 16 declared conflicts across its judges, counting each judge's own school once. Between them they rule out 57 of the 432 possible judge and project pairs. Dana Ortiz teaches at a school with nine entries, so the own school rule takes 9 projects off her list. Owen Fraser named one school, which also rules out 9. Helen Adeyemi named one student by initials, which rules out exactly 1 project.
The assigner still filled 108 of 108 seats, and the conflict audit sheet reports 0 visits that break a declared conflict. When a coordinator drags Dana onto one of her own school's projects, the move is allowed but flagged at once, with the message "Dana Ortiz has a conflict with P101: own school." and the same line on the audit sheet, until it is moved back or the flag is accepted on purpose.
Collecting conflicts without collecting too much
Ask for the school or employer, the schools they must not judge, any project codes they are connected to once projects are published, and the initials of any entrant they know. Do not ask for student names or for the nature of a relationship: the rule only needs to know that a conflict exists. Everything stays on the coordinator's computer; nothing is uploaded.
Showing that every conflict was kept
The conflict audit sheet lists each judge, the conflicts they declared, how many projects those conflicts rule out, and any visit that breaks one. Print it for the fair director or keep it with the results. It is also the fastest answer to a parent who asks whether the judge on their child's project knew the family.
Common mistakes
- Asking about conflicts only in the judge briefing, after the schedule is printed.
- Treating an employer as unrelated when a sibling of the entrant works there.
- Letting two judges from the same school sit on one panel, so their views count twice.
- Swapping a judge on the day without checking the replacement's conflicts.
- Writing full student names into a shared spreadsheet when initials would do.
When a conflict turns up at the table
It will happen. Have the judge move on without scoring, tell the desk, and in the assigner remove that visit, lock what has already happened and rebalance. The empty seat goes to a judge who is free, has room under their maximum and has no conflict with the project, and anything still unfilled is listed with the reason. See the step by step assignment guide for the rest of the day.