I wanted to post a thread here to make sure everyone was aware of the various issues currently in the Judge Center. Most of this is information you will want to share with your local communities and/or anyone interested in becoming a judge.

(1) Update of Rules Advisor Memberships: Due to a communication error between the Judge Center and the Personal Information Database, anyone completing the exam with a passing score on the Rules Advisor exam will get an error message. (e.g. “You passed the exam, but the Judge Center was unable to locate the brand associated with this exam's game system. Please submit feedback so that we can help you.”) As directed, the individual should submit feedback via the Judge Center, and provide their DCI# and Exam ID#; this way the person's membership can be updated. Additionally, if the person wishes to be added to MTGRules-L, he or she should provide an email address. (The listserv is an fficial resource for rules questions, and Daniel Kitachewsky, L3 from France, provides answers to all questions asked via the listserv.)

(1) Update of Rules Advisor Memberships: Due to a communication error between the Judge Center and the Personal Information Database, anyone completing the exam with a passing score on the Rules Advisor exam will not have their membership automatically updated. There's no error associated with this, just they will be unable to create an L1 Practice exam. Now, I periodically check all passing exams and prepare a weekly report of DCI#s for people who need that membership update. So, I capture pretty much all activity and forward that information to WotC, where it takes about 1-2 weeks for a membership update. I also manually set the access to the L1 Practice exam (much as I do with every Level 2 advancement) so the person can create the exam immediately. The person just has to make sure they've cleared their cookies for “judge.wizards.com” in order to make sure that permission is set correctly. Additionally, if the person wishes to be added to MTGRules-L, he or she should provide an email address. (The listserv is an fficial resource for rules questions, and Daniel Kitachewsky, L3 from France, provides answers to all questions asked via the listserv.) The listserv still exists for the time being, though I'm also directing people here to Magic Judge Apps and otherwise giving them info on how to become a Level 1 judge. (Someone with a Rules Advisor membership is STILL not a certified judge.)

Note: Keep in mind that the big benefit of being a Rules Advisor is the ability to generate L1 Practice exams. Given the importance of program development, all Level 2+ judges receive permission to generate L1 Practice exams for others. If you are Level 2+, you do NOT need to maintain your Rules Advisor membership, as the permission is set manually in the Judge Center. (Do use the L1 Practice exams judiciously though. There is a limited pool of questions in the L1 Practice exam pool, and it is highly advisable to use the L1 Practice exams over a period of time to measure improvement rather than grinding several exams all at once.)

(2) Reviews and the Year Field: As the drop down menu for reviews has not been updated to reflect that we've passed 2010, you do not have the option to select any subsequent year for the observed date. This is problematic to track various information, but when a review is actually submitted, the “Date Entered” field is automatically populated with the correct information and the Review ID# is sequentially generated. If you just note “This is a 201(X).” review somewhere in the review, that will be sufficient.

(3) Investigations and the Year Field: As with reviews, the drop down menu for investigations has not been updated to reflect that we've passed 2010. So you do not have the option to select any subsequent year for the incident date of the infraction. Again, it is somewhat problematic to track various information, but when an investigation is entered, the “Date Entered” field is automatically populated with the correct information and the Investigation ID# is sequentially generated. You can be clear on the event date in your statement.

(4) Update of Judge Memberships: Due to a communication error between the Judge Center and the Personal Information Database, anyone submitting an “Interview” type Review that advances someone (either L0 to L1, or L1 to L2) will get an error redirect. What is happening is that information to update the candidate's membership to the appropriate level can't be sent from the Judge Center to the Personal Information Database. However, the review is actually in the Judge Center. You can verify that by opening a separate tab or window, and just going to your “Review” and clicking the “Select” tab. It should be listed there, with all the relevant information. (Pressing back and “Submit” again will simply yield the same error and generate a duplicate review.) Furthermore, once the review is in, it takes between 1-2 weeks for the review to be processed and the person's membership to be updated. So, be clear to your candidates about the wait time.

(4) Update of Judge Memberships: With the year fix, you should not get any kind of error message when you submit an “Interview”-type Review to advance someone (whether from L0 to L1, or L1 to L2). However, while the review does get entered, there is still the communication error between the Judge Center and the Personal Information Database. So, as a result, while the review does go through, the person's membership still isn't automatically updated. The review must still be manually processed in order for the person's membership to be updated. As such, please continue to advise your candidates that there is a wait time for advancement.

Note: Important for new Level 1s is to keep in mind that because it takes between 1-2 weeks for a membership to be update. It is unwise to make a commitment to judge at an event immediately after passing the exam, especially if that event has a requirement to judge the event. (For example, Head Judge a Grand Prix Trial.) Wait until your membership is actually updated, then make a commitment. Furthermore, newly certified judges are NOT well positioned to act as a Head Judge for a Competitive REL event, absent preparation on these procedures. Since the Level 1 test is specifically about judging at Regular REL, the procedures associated with Competitive REL events are considered a growth area for Level 1s. So, anyone certifying a new Level 1 should keep that in mind and ensure this is properly communicated.

(5) Load Errors with Oracle Text: Due to another communication error between the Judge Center and Gatherer, there are sometimes errors in displaying card text. Typically you will get boxes for where the card text should appear, but it's just a box and no text. In most cases, refreshing the exam in your browser will cause the Oracle text to properly populate the exam. This may take a few tries. But in same cases, the outage does seem to last a few minutes. If you are creating a Personalized (Paper) exam, just give it some time and click refresh. If you are creating an Online exam (to avoid the print issues), be aware that the timer is running as soon as the exam is viewed. If this presents an issue with giving the candidate enough time to finish the exam (most exams should only take half the allotted time), please submit feedback as soon as possible.

(6) Print Issues with Exams: As the Judge Center has aged and print drivers have changed and the format of the Judge Center hasn't kept pace, there are issues with printing exams. In some cases, you won't be able to print all the pages. In other cases, you won't be able to get clean page breaks for the exam. Some have luck by using different browsers, or resizing the print version of the exam. Others will copy and paste the exam into Word or other software. There are also technical fixes discussed on the Judge Wiki…

http://wiki.magicjudges.org/en/w/Certification

…that may work. Online exams avoid this problem altogether, but may not be feasible in all situations.

I do apologize for these various issues, as it takes away from a wonderful resource for community development.

Edited Brian Schenck (Dec. 20, 2013 07:37:05 PM)

Additional information on issue (5):

Sometimes the text printing error continues for an extended period of time. This happened to Jarad at GP Worcester/Boston. I researched the issue and found a workaround that helps resolve this problem. If the problem is happening to you and won't seem to stop, or you regularly print exams for people you might want to implement this fix.

Reposted from my email to Shawn:

Here are the steps to a workaround that solves the problem in printing exams where the Oracle text will not appear.

——
The test generating website has some issues that are resolved by adding the site to the list of trusted sites in Windows, or your browser. This includes difficulty loading oracle text on exams.

For Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome you must add judge.wizards.com to the trusted sites- Control Panel, Internet Options, Security tab, Trusted Sites, Sites button, type ‘judge.wizards.com’ into the add box, uncheck the require server verification (https:) box, and hit Add.

For Firefox-
Tools, Options, Security tab, the top Exceptions button, type ‘judge.wizards.com’ into the address windows, and press Allow.
—–

Hope that helps some folks,

Greg Schwartz

To add to this list…

(7) There is a compatibility issue with the Judge Center involving the browsers used by some mobile devices. In some cases, questions/cards will not properly display. In other cases, the exams won't be submitted and scored correctly. (This may also be a result of intermitten outages between the various databases referenced by the Judge Center. I'm not a tech guy, so these problems are somewhat over my head.) With the code of the Judge Center getting more and more dated, there is simply no assurance that a device like an iPad/iPhone or Android based will work properly if you try to take the exam. I would strongly recommend not using such devices when taking exams, Practice or otherwise.

Another to add to the list…

(8) When entering information into the Judge Center, such as statements from players with DQ reports, try not to use the “<” symbol. For example “Player 1 < Player 2” type statements. The Judge Center appears to view this as incomplete HTML mark-up, and is causing some kind of runtime error. Which is a rather frustrating error to work out. So, if you are entering statements, reviews, or other bits, try to not use “<” or similar symbols. (I've used “==>” when noting changes when editing content. And certainly the “<card></card>” markup works fines.)

Hey everyone, I wanted to make people aware of a couple of recent developments in the Judge Center. Probably the most exciting thing is…

The year 2013 is now an option in both Reviews and Investigations.

So, yes, you can properly note the actual year for the event or observation date when entering this information. I know it was a long time coming, and I'm sure that spoils a few judge-based memes here and there, but at the least that should no longer be an issue. Now, 2014 isn't in the list of dates, so we'll see how that progresses for next year. EDIT: The fix that has been deployed will cause “2014” to appear once we hit January 1, 2014.

However, this did not restore the automatic update of memberships. I've updated the first post to note the existing status of certain things, but neither Judge memberships nor Rules Advisor memberships will automatically update. Make sure you advise people accordingly, especially new Level 1 judges, about this. That way they have reasonable expectations.

There's also a couple of other problems to add to this list…

(9) Exam Generation: When you generate exam, you start with two options… Game System and Desired Language. The first one is generally a default to Magic, as none of the other game systems have currently active exams. The second is when you either generate an English exam, or one of the many localized versions. There is now an error in that list, where you will see several iterations of the same language. Like, 13 different “English” selections in that list. This actually tracks with how many different types of exams are active in that language. So, there are 13 different active Magic exams in English.

It doesn't actually matter which “version” of the language you select as far as I can tell. I tried randomly with different ones and had no issue no matter what type of exam I tried to create. But, it does make things a bit challenging as you have to scroll down to get to all of the localized versions. So, to get to the Russian option, you have to scroll down a long way. In this respect, there appears to be no functional impact, except that it adds a level of frustration to the exam generation process.

(10) Notifications: Some of you may never notice this, but when an action takes place in the Judge Center (approval of content, entry of a review, submission of feedback), you should get an email from the Judge Center notifying you of this action. Currently, those notifications aren't being sent out. So, if you submit feedback about a question, you'll never see my response when I resolve your question. Or get a notification that a review was submitted. Or even that a content submission was returned to you for some reason. Which is a more functional thing, since it requires you to be more proactive in monitoring activity in the Judge Center… Logging in to check for recent reviews, or see if your feedback has been resolved, etc.

Anyhow, I'm sorry that it seems that for every positive step there's two negative ones. But I've made the appropriate people aware of the above issues, so hopefully these will be resolved sooner rather than later. (Please refrain from snarky comments; they don't help.)

Edited Brian Schenck (Dec. 11, 2013 10:38:33 PM)

Note: If you are having trouble logging into the Judge Center, clear all of your cookies. There is a bug in the “Text Only” view of the Judge Center, and you need to clear out your browser data such that you don't view the Judge Center in that fashion. That somehow interferes with viewing the site, and I had to clear out my browser data in order to fix this.

Another update… But notifications and person-to-person email have been restored. If you enter a review for someone, that person will receive a notification of that review being entered. If you submit feedback, then you will get an email of any reply. If you need to, you can also email someone else via the Judge Center. (Or should, depending on your membership and/or permissions.)

I just tested the person-to-person e-mail with several people, and it still doesn't seem to work.

Still being de-bugged. Don't go lighting candles just yet.

Another note: when you try to log in sometimes you get to the login screen over and over again.

I noticed this happens if your last login was with a different “preferred language” option (I tested this with italian and english).

You can actually log in if you choose the right preferred language or by deleting your cookies.

FYI, most browsers have an “incognito” or “private browsing” mode which opens up another browser window in it's own sandbox without cookies. You can use this to log into Judge Centre if you have this problem without having to delete all your cookies.

Issue with “Desired Language” has been fixed.

It's been a week since another fix was deployed, and I've been keeping an eye on it just to make sure the announcement wouldn't be too premature. But, I would like to announce that the “Membership Bug” has largely been resolved. That is…

If you enter an Interview-type review to promote someone to Level 1 or Level 2, their judge membership is automatically updated. Furthermore, if a person passes the Rules Advisor exam, that membership is automatically updated.

…which takes care of one of the most significant bugs with the Judge Center. But, if you test someone for Level 1, they should be promoted to Level 1 as soon as you submit that review. Note that it may not show in the Judge Center until the next time the person logs in, since the membership information is typically communicated at that time. Which should be a great boon for everyone and free up questions like “When will my membership be taken care of?”

That being said, this also brings a very special note about testing and promotion: You must use DCI#s when generating exams or entering reviews. Must use DCI#s!!! All membership information is keyed to someone's DCI# in the appropriate databases, and if you refer to a person by name only, you may very well end up promoting the wrong person. So, when you generate an exam and it asks for candidate, use the person's DCI#. When you enter a review for a person and it asks for subject, use the person's DCI# in that field. That way it posts to the proper person and updates correctly. Otherwise it can take a bit of time to sort out, and can affect event sanctioning in the interim.

As for other bugs, we've really the only three left: The print issue, the compatibility issue with certain browsers (particularly on mobile devices/tablets), and the messaging issue. But, that brings the list down to a much smaller set of issues at this time.

Merry Christmas all. :)

As an addendum, if your Judge level has not yet been updated and it has been more than two weeks since that review was entered, please submit feedback in the Judge Center. Please include the following information…

DCI#
Review ID#
Date of Review
Name of Judge Recommending Advancement

…as those pieces are necessary to track down what potentially happened with the membership. Older reviews are still being cleared from prior to the deployment of the fix, so it might take a little bit to clear any backlog. Apologies for that, but moving forward with reviews being submitted at this time, there should only be the occasional issue.

If you don't include a Review ID# because there isn't a review yet for you, recognize that there's no information that would actually update your membership: You need to contact the judge who's responsible for entering that information and/or that judge's RC.

Edited Brian Schenck (Dec. 20, 2013 08:03:30 PM)

Wondering if this issue is just me or everyone who uses the Chrome browser.
I went into the Judge Center today to take a practice test and could not using Chrome because the “banner” or “header” with the Judge Center logo was covering areas of the screen where i needed to be able to click on in order to enter the test. I ended up switching to IE and was able to take the practice test using that browser. But in IE the logo part that was causing issues in Chrome was not visible, but was still clickable. I tried clearing my cookies in Chrome and that did not fix the issue. I prefer Chrome to other browsers, this is why I am bringing this up.