Free BBQ Judges
Free BBQ recognises the amazing contribution judges make to the competition BBQ community. Thankyou.
Our judging system is designed around the idea of providing consistency through online certification, and by rewarding experienced judges with preferential seating at competitions where possible.
Judging Points
Free BBQ rewards experienced judges with a points system, we genuinely want experienced members of the judging community to receive preference for judging seats. The Free BBQ system is built around the concept that judges enter their scores on their mobile phone, so while we we do also support manual scorecards, we actively want to promote self entry as much as possible. Judges receive 5 points per self entry, and 1 point per manual entry. If a competition has 4 categories and you enter all 4 yourself, you'll receive 20 points for that competition. The prefered seating list is 50 points. Your points expire automatically after 12 months.
Judge Consistency Scores (JCS)
Free BBQ provides judges with a score to let them know if they're batting dramatically higher or lower on average than their peers. We want people to know when they're an angel or a demon judge! These notifications go out privately to judges once a round is complete. The system is designed to pick up a very small minority of judges, and only when the judge is really out of the ballpark across multiple proteins. Many competitions will not generate a JCS notification at all.
If you ever receive a JCS notification, it will include your table average for each protein you've judged, alongside your scores so you can compare the two. It's not intended as a negative experience, just an opportunity for Free BBQ to improve the quality and consistency of the scoring in our system.
Socialising
Free BBQ aims to encourage the "BBQ family" aspect of our community, including fostering the friendships between judges and competitors, while still maintaining the integrity of the judging process. The cornerstone of this approach is our 3am curfew for judge/team fratenising, and the idea is simply that most people are done partying by 3am (but maybe not at midnight), and most teams are only really starting to put proteins in their pits at that time. On the night before the main competition, Free BBQ encourages judges (and officials) to join the pit yard party, drink beers around fire pits, and have a great time.