Eric, I hope you'll forgive an injection of some humor: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3474#comic

What I mean to bring from Mr. Wiener is this: as you say, you've had a successful career or two, you're a parent, and in general have got a lot going on in your life - enough so that getting declined is, as you say, “barely a blip.” Your perspective is very likely vastly different than most judges. In my (anecdotal) experience, judging takes up an awful lot of emotional energy; a lot of people put their heart and souls into this, and thus being declined from an event hits far harder.

This isn't about trophies - after all, no one is advocating application acceptance for all. This is about good sportsmanship and not being an overly exuberant winner.

Obviously recommendations for Exemplar are subjective, but I can certainly speak for myself in that I would take public behavior into account under Attitude and Maturity. More importantly, one of the main objectives of the Exemplar program is to ameliorate the impact of being declined for a Grand Prix. Instead of foils only going out to a very limited set of experienced judges, the pool of eligible candidates will be essentially unbounded. Even though you're likely correct in that this issue will recur somewhat with Exemplar, the hope is that a greater emphasis on merit will make these rewards more fair and achievable to all.

I think that people getting excited about judging an event is awesome, and a big sign of success of the judge program. Expressing it in a mature and respectful way should not be perceived as an issue.
I would not be the judge I am today if I didn't see the excitement of other judges being selected to events and didn't want to experience it myself.

I however understand the point that is made in this article.

As with everything dealing with sensibility and feelings, I think we should always be aware that the judge program embraces a lot of cultures and backgrounds, and that there are no hard and fast rules about those topics. Whats is true for judge A may not be true for judge B, and what could be generally true in region A may not be generally true in region B.

One minor point not covered in this excellent article that might be worth injecting: not all application forms explain what the Sponsorship, Volunteer, and other extra checkboxes mean. When applying to my first event via JudgeApps, I for one was mightily confused, especially in that I was forced to check the checkbox without any understanding of what that meant. (The form would not submit unless I checked the checkbox.) In order to verify that my recollection correct, I randomly selected two events Open For Applications just now. Those random applications forms will let me choose between “Full Sponsorship” and “Volunteer”, without any indication what this means.

I realize it's a small point within this interesting world, but it is rather baffling to someone new such as myself and thus might bear a minor dollop of explanation/forewarning. :)