Elliot, I've no feedback reports from other users at this time about this issue.

I also use Chrome primarily (Version 31.0.1650.63 m) and can see no issue with the display in the Judge Center. I'm viewing an old exam from October 2013, the practice exam you created, and a practice exam I just created. In all cases, the “THIS DOCUMENT IS CONFIDENTIAL… Exam Results” header, and the summary information display correctly and do not overlap any of the questions or answer selections from the exam itself.

However, I use no add-ons and am at 100% zoom in browser. EDIT: I'm also at 1920 by 1200 pixels for my display size. So, I would check on your personal settings for your browser first. It's also possible there was some kind of load error at the time you viewed the exam… But, if so, that was very temporary and seems to not have affected any other user. At least, not that any feedback was submitted in the last 24 hours.

Edited Brian Schenck (Jan. 6, 2014 06:07:58 AM)

Ok, I reset Chrome to original settings/default settings and the issue is now gone. Maybe it was because I had Yahoo Toolbar installed or something. I appreciate your help. Thank you.

I want to bring to everyone's attention a potential issue with “Interview” type reviews (that is, the “Review Type” we use for promotions). This has only happened once, but it is something to be aware of as a double check before pressing the “Submit” button.

After you get past the initial selection of “Review Type” when first creating a review, there is a screen where you enter in pertinent information about yourself as the review, the subject of the review (you should be using DCI#s in the “Subject Name” field), and various information about when/where you observed the person. But there's also two fields that talk about “Level at time of observation”, which are drop downs. There is one for the reviewer and one for the subject.

The one for the subject is easy enough and not a problem except for record keeping. If you promote someone to Level 1, that field should be “0” since it is a promotion from Level 0 to Level 1. If you make sure that this is “0 ==> 1” then the person's profile in the Judge Center will be properly updated to show that they've passed the Level 1 exam and the date they passed the exam (the same as the date of observation). This provides a good record in case someone needs to check on the person's membership at a glance. The same process works for Level 2 promotions, except that it's “1” in that drop down.

The one for the reviewer is the field with which you need to be careful. This field typically auto-populates based on the reviewer, so if you are Level 2, then that drop down will be at “2”. However, it is possible to change the drop down to any other value. You can change it to a higher level, but that won't affect anything. However, setting it to a lower level (such as “1”) could potentially result in your Judge level being lowered. Yes, it may be possible to demote yourself.

This has only happened once, but given the potential affect, this is something to check before pressing the “Submit” button. Just look over your review and double check the relevant fields of information while previewing what you've entered. That way you don't accidentally demote yourself, and otherwise ensure the promotion record is properly recorded in the Judge Center.

Thanks!

Another infrequent bug has started popping up recently, which has to do with users having multiple accounts in the Judge Center. This is typically a result of having had multiple DCI#s, all of which were used to access the Judge Center at some point, and after those accounts (or profiles) were created, the DCI#s are then combined. This causes issues with Judge Center access, as the Judge Center can't properly distinguish the various profiles from one another, as they will all have the same DCI#.

There is NO fix for this issue. Primarily because there is no way to delete or “merge” multiple profiles in the Judge Center. This probably goes back to the creation of the Judge Center, and thus predates my involvement, but nothing allows for merging profiles. At best, I can jury rig a fix by manually granting permissions for each profile. That at least ensures that a user has proper permissions to use the Judge Center. The downside is that it doesn't fix the actual problem, and because a user has two profiles, it mucks up exam generation and review posting. The exam issue even allows a user to bypass cooldowns, as the Judge Center sees this as one user generating the exam for another, completely different user.

Yes, this sucks. I'm sorry, but the only thing I can recommend is to not log into the Judge Center with a second DCI# if you have an existing membership. At least then, a second profile won't be created and once you combine DCI#s, your existing profile will just use the new DCI# after the different DCI#s have been merged. Again, the trick is to not ever have two profiles in the Judge Center active, and this only seems possible if you have two different DCI#s at some point and used both to access the Judge Center.

Again, I am sorry for this issue and just hope that it only affects a very few number of users. (Please do not take this as an opportunity to vent on the flaws in the Judge Center; the developers are working to resolve what issues they can, and I'm not certain they see these posts. I do, but all I can do is commiserate about the issues or get sad from all the frustrations people experience. And yes, that sucks doubly for me.)

This issue has been resolved as of 2015/6/4.

Edited Brian Schenck (June 4, 2015 05:37:27 AM)

Another minor bug in the Judge Center, which is primarily a cosmetic issue, is that certain mana symbols won't display properly. This usually is with snow mana symbols, hybrid mana symbols that appear in rules text, and Phyrexian mana.

For the most part, we don't use cards that feature these mana symbols. When we do, it's when identifying a correct answer has nothing to do with using that information. (So, nothing involving the total cost to cast a spell.) If you happen to encounter a question with such a card, you don't need to submit feedback unless there is a functional impact to the question or identifying the correct answer. (When in doubt, ask yourself “Does it really matter?”)

This is also true with color indicators that may appear on cards. Again, where used, the presence or absence of a color indicator shouldn't have an impact on identifying the correct answer.

I've received a few requests for adding “PPTQ” to the list of event types for reviews. Unfortunately, this change is probably not forthcoming for a while. For the time being, I would recommend the use of “Other” and make a note about the event in the body of the review itself. (I.e., “This review is about Brian's judging the PPTQ at SuperAwesomeFun Games and Comics.”)

Note: Alternatively, the location field can be used for this as well. Just state “PPTQ SuperAwesomeFun Games and Comics” or something similar.

Edited Brian Schenck (April 7, 2015 09:44:41 AM)

Thanks Brian for your efforts (as ussual :p)

May I suggest using also the “location” field to help on this?

We are currently using it for L3 Recommendations and it would be very easy
to put something like:

Event type: “Other”
Location: “PPTQ Madrid”

My two cents!
Sergio
El 07/04/2015 14:51, “Brian Schenck” <forum-1766-79e2@apps.magicjudges.org>
escribió:

I don't know if there is a need to filter for reviews from PPTQs in the same way as for L3 Recommendations, hence why the location field is treated differently, but that approach seems reasonable as well.

Are there any issues with just using “Pro Tour Qualifier” for both PPTQs and RPTQs?

Originally posted by Johanna Virtanen:

Are there any issues with just using “Pro Tour Qualifier” for both PPTQs and RPTQs?

As far as I understand, that field does not post to anything in the membership database. As a drop down field, it should only serve as a way to filter for reviews on certain events and/or provide potential information for reviewer and subject. Thus a person could track event and/or review history to an extent.

My intent was not to drive discussion on use of the data fields, which I feel is best served in another thread, but rather point out that the form itself is not likely to be modified soon.

“Other” is fine, but for Investigations it would probably be better to put “PTQ”. It has the same REL and conveys much the same meeting for Investigations cases. Of course, as Brian notes - put in your description that it is a PPTQ :)

Not a big deal, either way, but marginally better for Investigations if there is no other competing factor.

-Eric S.
—– Original Message —–
From: Brian Schenck
To: eshukan@verizon.net
Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2015 8:52 AM
Subject: Re: Judge Center Issues (Compilation) (Community Corner)


I've received a few requests for adding “PPTQ” to the list of event types for reviews. Unfortunately, this change is probably not forthcoming for a while. For the time being, I would recommend the use of “Other” and make a note about the event in the body of the review itself. (I.e., “This review is about Brian's judging the PPTQ at SuperAwesomeFun Games and Comics.”)

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I wanted to report another issue that seems to have developed involving the Judge Center and the change to the new WPN profile. Specifically some people are encountering issues with generating a Rules Advisor exam for themselves.

Normally, the permissions in the Judge Center check for two things: Whether the person has an email address on file and whether the person's birth date is on file. The first is just so a notice can be sent to the person about their new membership, the second is to make certain that WotC can send the person emails. Under COPPA, the person has to be 13 or older. So there's a check there to make certain that sending email won't cause issues.

The latest development is causing issues with syncing information between the database and the Judge Center. The exact issue is unknown, but this results in the permission check not validating that the person can generate the exam for themselves. So the person gets an error that they need to update their email address and/or birth date. Even if it is on file.

A fix is currently being developed, but the current procedure per WPN customer service is to refer that person to their Regional Coordinator or to submit feedback to the Judge Center. From there, either the RC (or designated person) or myself can create the Rules Advisor exam for them. The normal cooldown period needs to be manually checked and enforced, and the person's membership information needs to get forwarded to WotC's developers so they can work on the fix.

This is the ONLY exception to creating a Rules Advisor exam for someone else. Under normal circumstances the exam should never be generated for someone else, as it is not intended as a practice exam for mentoring purposes nor is it intended as a pre-requisite for taking the Level 1 exam. It was never designed with either purpose in mind, and was only designed as a way to help get those in remote areas access to some tools that could guide them to the resourced to become a Level 1 judge. (That's why every Level 2+ can simply generate an L1 Practice exam for a candidate; it's one less hoop for local candidates and gives the proper mentoring tool to all L2+ judges.)

So please, if someone comes to you and has a problem generating the exam: Make sure they know how to generate exams and check that they are selecting the right exam (too many people get confused and think it's the L1 Practice exam, and misread the “Availability” field instead of the “Version” field), maybe generate a couple Easy Practice exams to help, but otherwise direct them to their RC or to submit feedback in the Judge Center.

Thank you!

I wanted to make people aware of a couple common issues I've seen with reviews lately…

(1) Wrong Subject: This goes a bit beyond ensuring the use of DCI#s when you enter a review into the Judge Center. In some cases while people are entering a review, they will preview the review and decide to make some edits. They do this by pressing the “Back” button on the browser, make the changes, then press “Preview” again. Once they check that the change was made, the person presses “Submit”.

The problem here is that pressing back will often reset other fields, such as the “Subject” field, thus causing the name to default to that of the reviewer. So what happens is I've seen people enter “Demotion” reviews for themselves. Which is bad if that actually posts. The other issue is that since the Judge Center works via forms, this can create other issues as well by resetting fields. The best thing to do is to after pressing “Preview” and checking your draft, is to go to the bottom of the page and open the “Edit Review” expansion to press the “Continue” button. That opens up all the fields for editing, and keeps all your previously entered data as well.

(2) Review Status and Updating Memberships: The proper status of an advancement review after posting the membership update should be “Approved”. This means the Judge Center transmitted the data to the membership database to update the candidate's judge membership. If the status is “Submitted”, then the transmission of data likely failed. (This also happens if you edit a review after it has been submitted, such as fixing its type or editing an error.) If you see this, submit feedback to the Judge Center and I can fix the review to get the information updated.

Note that if the advancement review does show “Approved” and your candidate's membership hasn't been updated, it could be that the candidate hasn't logged into the Judge Center to sync information between the Judge Center and the membership database. It also could be a bug as well, such as with the dual profiles mentioned earlier, so you can submit feedback and I'll look into this as well. (The proper status for an evaluation type review is “Submitted”.)

(3) Lastly, I'm seeing an increase in duplicate exams being created for candidates. The issue seems to be with people pressing the “Refresh” button on their browsers while viewing the exam summary page. As the Judge Center works via forms, this means pressing “Refresh” can cause the information to post again and create a new exam for the same person. (I think this also happens if the Judge Center seems to hang up on a request, and people either press “Back” and submit again, or press “Refresh”.) Which gets hinky if you then enter the results and get this terrible score when it is graded because the questions and answers don't line up…

If you do happen to create an exam, just exit that page by going back to your list of exams and click on the exam again. That will bring up the “Enter Answers” link. If you accidentally create a second exam, you can submit feedback and I can take care of the exam. (Or if you haven't yet viewed the exam and its status is still “Ready”, you can cancel it yourself.) Otherwise please note the normal retest period is 2 months for the Level 1 exam and 3 months for the Level 2 exam, as covered in the Official blog.

Most of these things only take a few moments to resolve, so it's not a serious concern or worry to fix these things. But please do submit feedback if you notice it, so that it can be resolved sooner.

Edited Brian Schenck (May 27, 2015 05:16:58 AM)

I an update on one of the issues mentioned in this thread. This is regarding users with multiple profiles and the same DCI#.

A fix has been created by WotC that has some potential to address the problem. It's a fix that is being used cautiously at the moment, just to ensure there are no ill effects from this fix. So, if you have two or more profiles in the Judge Center that have the same DCI#, either contact me directly and provide your DCI#, so that I can forward the information directly to the WotC developers for them to use the fix to combine your profiles. If you tested someone with multiple profiles, then you can contact me with that information as well. Alternatively, feedback via the Judge Center works too.

If you have previously contacted me with this information, then you don't need to contact me again. The WotC developers have a list of DCI#s to work through. It will be a slow process though, so please be patient.


Additionally, there's been a few cases of people having errors creating exams for candidates. Specifically, when you enter the DCI# into the candidate field, it pops up with an error. This error is likely the result of the person not having a name attached to their membership account. (It could either be these fields are blank, or there is a bad character present.) You can verify this by trying to do a “People” search in the Judge Center via that person's DCI#, and it should come up with the same error if the name has no or bad data.

The developers have suggested the following fix: When the name issue comes up you can have the user go to the Accounts website to see if they can add it themselves, or have them login to Planeswalker Points which will prompt them to add a name as well. Then if they log back into Judge Center, they should have a name.

If you happen to have a disqualification report to enter and encounter this error, you'll need to contact me directly or submit feedback. That way I can privately contact the appropriate party with the information.

I have an update to the June 4th, 2015 post on Judge Center Issues.

A few people have submitted feedback in the last couple of days about an error message when submitting a disqualification report. I wanted to make some suggestions:

(1) Before entering the report, try doing a search by DCI# in the “People” section of the Judge Center and/or doing a search on the Planeswalker Points website. The problem may be related to older DCI#s that may not have been converted to the new WER unified profile.

Doing either of these two things can help by (a) making sure you have a valid DCI# and (b) ‘creating’ a profile for a user in the Judge Center who doesn't have one. If the user doesn't have a profile in the Judge Center, a search by DCI# will populate one with information from the membership database. Entering a disqualification report would normally do this, but a search by DCI# might be able to mitigate this by creating the profile first via a “People” search.

(2) If you encounter an error, don't immediately submit feedback. First, open up a new browser window or tab and go to the “Investigations” section and click the “Select” tab. This will list your investigations. Check to see if your disqualification report still submitted. If the report is there, check to see if any information is missing. For most of the feedback I've received, the report is there and it appears information is present about the situation. So, the bug is likely just with the subject profile and not with the report itself. (That is, you get an error message, but the process wasn't adversely affected.)

(3) If your report isn't there, DO NOT post anything about the situation in the feedback itself until requested. Feedback in the Judge Center is public, and can be seen by normal users. (I've had plenty of other users “answer” questions in that section thinking they were being helpful, or looking for answers to their own questions.) I can set feedback to “private” once I've had a chance to visit the Judge Center and check for new feedback. But I do sleep and I do have a full-time job, so sometimes you might have to wait for a response. So, if you encounter an error, only share the following three pieces of information: (a) Your name and DCI#, (b) The DCI# of the subject. (No names!), and © The sanctioning number of the event.

This will allow me to do a search and check to see if it is there, perhaps still in “Draft” form. Or, it should give me enough information to create a “shell” of a report as a temporary fix to get the process started. If I require additional information or believe that the bug might be more serious, then I can provide further instructions to you. Such as contacting Eric Shukan directly.

Thank you!

Edited Brian Schenck (Sept. 27, 2015 06:02:34 AM)