SFS Original Design Contest Judging Rules

AWARDS:
* There shall be first, second, and third place awards for each category. A contestant may not take multiple design awards within a category.
* In the case where a contestant would be eligible for multiple awards in a category, they shall be awarded the highest possible award and the lesser award(s) shall go to the next eligible entry in that category.
* There shall be major awards for the best of each class.
* There shall be minor awards for those who submitted 10 or more builds.
* There shall be minor awards for those who submitted a build to each category within a class.

JUDGE SELECTION:
* A panel of seven judges shall score the entries.
* This panel shall contain one member from each of the SFS forums, the SFS discord, and the SFS subreddit.
* Each one of those members shall nominate one more judge to the panel at their sole discretion.
* The final member shall be the contest organizer.
* Judges may submit entries to the contest.

VOTING:
* Judges shall vote by ranking within each category in each division as your first, second, third, etc. choices to win that division.
* You must rank at least three, and you can rank more. If there are few submission in a category we will decide what categories to merge.
* The entire voting process shall be done with names and timestamps hidden, to reduce bias.
* Judges MAY NOT rank their own build(s). Please abstain from ranking it with a dash (-).

SCORING:
* The entries shall be scored according to a modified Borda count, following the formula 1/(rank+1).
* Blank votes shall count the same as the last possible rank, so in a group of 8 entries, it'd be the same as being voted 8th.
* First, second, and third place shall be determined by the highest score in a category.
* In the case of a tie, the entry with the higher number of first-place rankings shall be the winner.

BEST-IN-CLASS:
* The best-in-class entries shall be selected from only those entries that won their category.
* Judges shall indicate their one preferred selection for best-in-class for each class.
* Judges MAY NOT select their own build(s).
* In the case of a tie, the contest organizer shall decide.
* Under no circumstances shall the contest organizer select their own build(s) in the case of a tie.

ACCOUNTABILITY:
* The full edit history of the voting document shall be visible to all the judges.
* The full edit history of the voting document shall be made public to all visitors to the document after the completion of the judging period.
* In the case that cheating, collusion, or the violation of any of these rules by the judges has been detected, the accused judge shall give a single-message explanation to the rest of the judging panel, after which, the remaining judges alone shall decide a course of action.
* In the case that it has been agreed that a instance of cheating, collusion, or the violation of any of these rules has been detected, the offense and the course of action decided upon shall be made publicly known to all participants through the same channels used to promote the contest and announce the results.

SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT THE MASTERWORK SCIFI SPACECRAFT CATEGORY:
Because of the large size of this category, the judging panel decided to break it into 5 subcategories of equal size, into which entries were randomly placed. Each subcategory was scored according to the rules above, and the top two of each subcategory were placed into a "playoff" category of 10 entries. This playoff category was scored according the rules above and the top three entries were announced as the winners of the Masterwork Scifi Spacecraft category.