You are what you present: Being a Judge vs just judging magic.
Along my journey to becoming a judge I learned a great many things. I learned about the stack, and the steps and phases and the interesting and often confusing set of rules that make up the game of Magic. I studied, took tests, and talked with other judges who quizzed me and helped me to become more knowledgeable. In short they helped me to learn how to judge a magic event and apply the skills necessary to run a tournament as a part of a team; and that is fine. Those are the basic skills require to become a judge. That’s said, there is also more. There is a large difference from being a Magic judge, and simply judging a magic event.
First, let’s talk about when we are Judges. The obvious instances are when we are actively judging events, but there are other instances as well. If you answer a random judge call at a store you’ve never been to before, you are a judge in that moment. If you are a member of an online public community and you regularly answer questions as a judge and people within that community know you mostly as a judge, then in that community you are a representative of the judge community. Here your actions reflect upon us all.

To illustrate better what I am talking about let me tell a story.
Some time ago, in an online Magic: The Gathering Page a “discussion” began to dominate the page. A simple image with the phrase, “add the phrase ‘in my pants’ to the end of a magic card name”. The post blew up instantly with card name after card name, innuendo after innuendo until there were more than 100 comments. Many people I knew commented on this post, store owners players, judges, and judge hopefuls. I am ashamed to say that I was one of the judges. Let’s fast forward to several days later to the EDH night at my LGS. I am there with several regulars and Locals from the area. We sit, we play edh we talk and all is well. What I didn’t know is that I had hurt and offended one of my friends that I was playing with. After I left, an argument broke out between two judge hopefuls and my friend. Many words were exchanged and feelings were hurt, in part because of this post. In Posting on this thread I had unintentionally labeled myself as sophomoric and I had, as an authority figure within the community where I advertised myself as a judge, condoned the inappropriate comments which had permeated the thread. Because of this I made my friend feel like she could not talk to me about how hurt she was and I had made her feel alienated. After realizing this I made every effort to speak with her personally and apologize and thankfully we remain good friends today.

The main point of my story is that being a Judge is more than rules knowledge and running tournaments. Being a judge is about being a representative and a leader within the magic community at large. It is about being a mentor and mediator for your players. We are a representation of the game in a lot of ways. Any judge will tell you that being a judge is a customer service roll. So what does this mean specifically? When does this apply?
This was not something I fully understood when I made the comment on that post. When being a Judge we need to remember that it only take one bad experience for a player to lose faith in judges. We fight tooth and nail to stop that from happening but this is the first step, knowing when we are judges.

So now that we have talked about when we are judges, let’s talk more about the other roles of being a judge that go hand in hand with that. Mentorship and mediation are two key pieces to becoming a leader within your local community. You can be a resource for you players and a positive influence on the atmosphere of your gaming shop. We all know what to do at a tournament when two players disagree vehemently and even have heated arguments. We try to mediate the situation as best we can and when the round is over, it is likely that despite bad feelings, they will likely not see each other again and if they do, will have had a long time to cool off about it, but what do you do if those player are both locals? What if the frequent the same shops? What if it’s a player and a tournament organizer? What can you do then? As a Judge, we are in a unique position to help in situations like this. As a judge we are familiar with impartial mediation. We are already seen as an authority figure within the community of players and to some extent tournament organizers and we can use this to mediate these disagreements and longer standing enmity between members of the community and in so doing, improve the community at large.

In the above situation, I realized my error in posting. It created the appearance of acceptance and perpetuated the idea of magic as an “old boys club”. When I thought about this and realized I had been wrong, I knew it was my responsibility to repair the damage done as best I could. I spoke with my friend, and the judge hopefuls about the situation. We talked and I attempted to explain the situation from each-others perspective I talked between them and helped them to understand where the others were coming from. In this case mediation meant acting as an impartial voice for both parties. I was able to allow them to share their thoughts and feelings clearly and concisely and work towards a state of understanding, if not agreement. Specifically, this event sparked the discussion with the judge hopefuls about this very articles topic, which leads me into the next portion of mentorship.

Being a mentor might be the most important aspect of being a judge and not just a person who judges the occasional magic tournament. As we have discussed so far, Judges are the customer service face of tournament magic. We are responsible for knowing the rules, mediating disagreements and making difficult judgement calls about the appropriate/ inappropriate behavior of our players. Being a Mentor for our players and judges is how we do that. A judge should lead by example. Players will look to you as an authority figure and players young and old will emulate what do you. If you walk around your LGS hurling obscenities at your closer friends and yelling loudly to people for no reason, then that is the environment you will cultivate. It will be abrasive and you will have players who show up once and never return. Being a mentor means setting a good example for what is expected at not any events you run, but all events they might attend in the future. It means, welcoming new players to events and making yourself available to answer questions and address concerns. Make yourself approachable. Make an announcement at the beginning of the event, or in an online forum, look for opportunities to teach and educate. Most importantly, practice what you preach. You will be amazing how much a change in your persona can affect the community. Since this event I had made a concerted effort to be this person in the community and in my LGS and I have notice players becoming for friendly, more respectful, and more understanding. The LSG community specifically has told staff that they have been enjoying events more and feel more comfortable with judges and tournament play as a whole.