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Remote contest voting

Remote voting lets each juror vote from home independently. The Salon Chairman is responsible for applying the cut per category, assigning the awards, and closing the contest.

Role: Juror

When there is pending voting, the juror accesses it from the Votes menu and selects the corresponding contest.

For each category in the contest:

  1. Review the submitted photographs
  2. Assign a numeric score to each photo
  3. Click Vote

Repeat the process for all categories. Once a juror has finished voting all photos in a category, they can see a provisional result based solely on their own scores; if they still have photos left to vote in that category, they'll see a notice instead of the ranking.

🔒 Anonymity: while the contest hasn't finished, the photo title and participant name are hidden and shown as "Photo N" / "Participant N", both during voting and in the juror's provisional result. The Salon Chairman and association admins always see the full information. Photos are also shown in random order, not the order they were submitted in, so works by the same author don't appear one after another.

🔍 Taking a closer look. In the top right corner of the gallery, the magnifier icon opens the photograph in a separate viewer where it can be enlarged —with the + and − buttons, the mouse wheel or a pinch on a touch screen— to check the fine detail: grain, edges or retouching. Next to it, the full screen icon makes the gallery fill the browser window. Closing the viewer with the ✕ or the Esc key returns to the same photograph, with the scores exactly as they were.

Role: Salon Chairman

The Salon Chairman accesses Votes and selects the contest. They can review the Jury table — the full-screen view with every photograph in ranking order — at any time, even before every juror has finished voting, and filter it by City, Members (association members only), or Score range.

The Jury member filter shows the ranking exactly as that jury member sees it: it is recalculated using only their scores. Only the Salon Chairman and the association administrators see this filter. The city filter accepts several towns at once.

Reviewing and disqualifying photographs

While the contest is not closed, the salon chairman and the association administrators can review the submitted photographs and disqualify any that do not comply with the rules. Select a category and click Review photos: a gallery opens with the photographs in that category, and you move between them with the arrows.

  • The magnifier icon, in the top right corner, opens the photograph in a viewer where it can be enlarged —with the + and − buttons, the mouse wheel or a pinch on a touch screen— to check the fine detail before deciding. Closing it with the ✕ or the Esc key returns to the same photograph.
  • Disqualify requires a mandatory reason, which is shown to the jury below the photograph so they know why it is no longer being scored.
  • A disqualified photograph is dimmed and marked as Disqualified photograph; hovering over it reveals the original image, so the decision can be reviewed.
  • Restore undoes the disqualification and brings back the scores the jury had already given it: there is no need to vote on it again.
  • Disqualified photographs do not count as pending votes, so voting can be closed as usual.

ℹ️ The jury cannot disqualify: they score, but they do not decide which photographs compete. Review is always done on the selected category or theme, because the same photograph may be valid in one category and not in another.

Reviewing the jury's votes

In remote voting each jury member scores on their own and nobody sees the whole picture. To answer the question that always comes up when someone disputes a result —where does this score come from, who gave what— the chairman and the association administrators have a View votes button, next to Review photos.

It opens the same gallery used by in-person voting: each photograph with the scores of every jury member, one below the other.

  • It is read-only: the fields are disabled and there is no save button. To correct a value, use Refine votes on the photograph, which is where that decision is recorded.
  • A jury member who has not scored a photograph yet shows an empty field, so it is easy to see who is missing.
  • It appears once a category is selected, just like "Review photos": the gallery shows the photographs of one category. It is available at any time, including while voting is still open.

ℹ️ Jury members do not see this button: knowing their colleagues' scores while they vote would bias them, which is precisely what remote voting prevents.

1. Refine votes (optional)

While voting for a category is still open, the Salon Chairman can click Refine votes on any photograph in the Jury table to review each juror's score and correct a value if they spot an error, without having to wait for voting to close.

2. Apply a cut per category (optional)

The cut is not a single value for the whole contest: each category has its own, calculated on the sum of the scores from jurors who have already voted on each photo (not the average):

  1. Select the category, open the Jury table and click Define cut
  2. The system shows the Score distribution — how many photos fall at each value and the cumulative percentage
  3. Enter a target acceptance percentage to see the suggested cut and apply it with Use suggestion, or type the minimum score directly
  4. Confirm the cut

3. Assign awards

As soon as all jurors have voted, awards can be assigned (there's no need to wait until the contest is closed). Awards are assigned photograph by photograph from the Jury table:

  1. Select the category and open the Jury table
  2. Find the photograph in the ranking, ordered by the jury's total scores
  3. Click Assign awards on its card and choose the award

As many awards can be assigned as have been configured for the contest (first prize, second prize, first prize per category, etc.). Awards can be freely reassigned until the winners are notified.

When assigning, the Clear awards button empties that photo's award selection. If the author already has an award in this category, in another category, or the selected award is already assigned to a different photo, a warning appears before confirming — it can still be assigned anyway if confirmed.

In the Jury table, each photograph can show up to four indicators next to its score:

  • ⚪ Scissors — the photo doesn't pass the cut set for its category
  • 🟢 Check — the participant is an association member
  • 🔴 Warning — the author already has an award in this same category
  • 🟠 Warning — the author already has an award in another category

4. Close the contest

Once all jurors have voted, click Close contest and confirm. From this point on:

  • The contest moves to Finished status and all real information (participant names and photo titles), anonymized until then, is revealed
  • Assigned awards can still be corrected until the winners are notified
  • Neither the votes nor the cut for any category can be modified

Closing the contest is up to the salon chairman. The next three steps —generating the minutes, uploading the signed minutes and notifying the users— are available both to the salon chairman and to the association administrators.

5. Generate the minutes

Once the contest is closed, the Generate minutes button becomes available. It produces an editable draft with the contest results, which can be exported to PDF. The minutes are written in the association's configured language, regardless of the language of whoever generates them.

Before the draft is generated you are asked for a few details that cannot be inferred from the contest:

  • How the minutes should refer to the event — Contest, Salon, League, Rally or Circuit
  • Sponsors from which a point is requested — only the contest's approved sponsors can award points; if the contest has none, the section is empty
  • Signing town, date and time — the signing statement of the minutes

After the awards, the minutes close with an Other selected works section: the remaining admitted images — those above their section's cut-off — that received no award, grouped by section and listing the author and the title of each one. Next to the name of every jury member and of every awarded or selected participant, their federation numbers are written out, taken from the Memberships tab of their account, whether or not that body sponsors the contest; anyone who has not filled them in appears with their name alone.

You can regenerate the minutes at any time; doing so asks for these details again and discards any manual editing you had on screen.

6. Upload the signed minutes

Once the jury signs the generated minutes (on paper or as a PDF), the Upload signed minutes button lets you upload that signed version as the official document, in PDF format. It becomes available at the same time as Generate minutes. Awards can still be corrected after uploading the signed minutes, right up until the winners are notified; if a signed version has already been uploaded, the button becomes Replace signed minutes and lets you swap it for a new one.

7. Notify users

Once the contest is closed and at least one award has been assigned, the Notify users button appears. It sends an email to participants and winners. It can only be clicked once — the notification cannot be resent.

Public result of the contest

Closing the contest is not enough for the results to appear: until you press Notify users, the public page shows neither the photographs nor the winners. This is deliberate — the verdict becomes public when the association decides, not when the status changes in the application.

Once the notice has gone out, any user can enter the contest and see:

  • Winners section — filterable by category, shows the awards given
  • Submitted photographs — in three views: Mural (a grid sorted by score), List (a table with author, category, score and award) and Statistics (works received and selected per category, and authors by country). They can be filtered by category and, when the category has a cut-off defined, by whether they pass it

Summary for the association administrator

From My associations → Contests, the administrator can view a summary of the finished contest:

  • Registered participants
  • Jurors who awarded the prizes
  • Revenue collected (in paid contests)
  • Number of categories

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Here is an explainer video:

Votación de un concurso remoto.mp4