Judging Session Instructions

Each week, a group of Sevilians gather at the Sev Trek IRC Channel #sevtrek and decide the winning punchlines of the caption contests. You're free to join in each week as well. Just follow our 4 step program:

1. Join #sevtrek

First of all, you need some IRC software (eg - MIRC). Download.com is a great place to download software. Once you've installed your IRC software, log onto the server irc.magicstar.net. Then join the #sevtrek channel by typing the command /join #sevtrek. If you want some more help installing and using IRC, Nick Frame has written a comprehensive guide to IRC.

Alternatively you can use IRC via the web. Just visit the Magicstar Chat Room. Once the Java applet has loaded, enter your nick in the left corner, click the Connect button, then click the # Join button. In the New Channel popup, for name, enter 'sevtrek' (without the quotes), leaving 'key' blank (not sure what that's for). And bingo, you're in!

2. At the right time

The Judging Session begins every Saturday 7am (Australian EST). To find out exactly what time the judging session is in your own timezone, check out a map of the world's timezones or even easier, check out the countdown in the left margin.

3. Vote for each punchline

You need to point your browser to the finalist punchlines page in your browser to see the finalist punchlines we're voting for. When the moderator picks a punchline, everyone votes whether to cut or keep it.

If you want to keep the punchline, you type 'keep'. If you don't think the punchline deserves to be a winner, you vote against it by typing 'cut'. If undecided, type 'neutral'. You can change your vote just by voting differently. Your vote will automatically be changed.

4. Decide the winner

By now, we have narrowed our choices down to hopefully less than half a dozen punchlines. At this point, the moderator will ask everyone to vote for the punchline they consider the best by using the vote4 command. Eg - vote4 PUNCHLINE. If a single punchline is unanimous at this point, we have decided our winning punchline! If it's not decisive, we eliminate the punchlines that didn't get many votes so we narrow it down to two or three punchlines. Usually at this point, we will have some discussion on the various merits of each punchline and everyone will try and convince everyone else to swing over to their point of view. Often several judges will swap sides at this point. We vote again and usually a decisive vote occurs and we have a winning punchline. If it's not decisive, we ask Wendy (the SevQueen) to cast the deciding vote!!","bodytext");

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