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Magistrate Best Practices

The Quiz Magistrate (QM) is the personnel engine that powers and manages a quiz room at a meet. At the most basic level, a QM governs their quizzes and is ultimately responsible for the fair and timely conduct of their quizzes; but in addition, the QM has unique and profound influence over the tone, professionalism, and quality of their quizzes and thereby the meet. Magistrates have an awesome responsibility, judging queries and optimizing quiz operations for maximal missional outcomes. Those who aspire to serve as QMs desire a noble task and should be temperate, self-controlled, trustworthy, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, gentle, and not quarrelsome.

What follows are magistrate best practices: policies, principles, and protocols QMs are encouraged to adopt and persistently perform to the best of their ability throughout Bible Quizzing.

Attitudes

A magistrate’s attitude sets the exemplar quizzers and coaches mirror; therefore, magistrates must be ever vigilant in their efforts to demonstrate the ideal of objective servant leadership, ambassadorship, and professionalism.

Objective Servant Leadership

Magistrates are first and foremost servants; servants of God, of Quizzing and its mission, and of quizzers and coaches. QMs must prioritize long-term missional outcomes, which necessarily requires serving with humility, grace, and fairness. While magistrates need to exercise authority and control over their quizzes and their quiz rooms, QMs should always do so with the heart of a servant, being stern or authoritarian only when necessary to support the mission.

To maximize missional outcomes, magistrates must always strive to be completely fair, which necessitates operating in a consistent, predictable manner. QMs must be trustworthy, which requires they be consistent, which requires they be objective in all rulings and quiz operations. No quizzer, coach, team, or organization should be shown favoritism or disfavoritism.

Quizzing Ambassadorship

Magistrates are the front-line ambassadors of Bible Quizzing, authorized representatives who convey the message of the mission and present the practical face of Quizzing. QMs therefore must always be welcoming and encouraging to everyone.

Magistrates should at all times, including outside of quiz meets, be prepared to encourage, teach, correct, and when necessary even rebuke to advance the mission. QMs should:

QMs should do all this at all times with great patience and careful instruction.

Professionalism

Magistrates should perpetually demonstrate professionalism while maintaining a casual, approachable attitude and pleasant, engaging, even entertaining demeanor. QMs should remain receptive to constructive criticism of their professionalism.

When rebuking the first offense of poor attitudes and behavior, the QM should seek to give a quick, light, but serious word, privately if possible, but always without delay and always with respect. Most are not self-aware they’re acting unprofessionally, and many have not fully thought through their attitude strata, so a single short instruction is often the only necessary corrective action. Repeated unprofessionalism, however, should be addressed through escalation to the community of magistrates and other leadership. This should be done in as private a way possible to limit negative impact to the mission.

Note QMs should not use a foul or any other rule book statute as a means to correct unprofessionalism. Measuring professionalism is subjective, and the rule book is objective; thus, rules should only be used when objectively required and are therefore incompatible with correcting unprofessionalism.

Preparation and Setup

Magistrates should arrive to the meet fully prepared to execute their duties with excellence. Prior to each meet, every QM should:

Ideally, QMs should run at least a handful of practice quizzes before the first meet of a season or after having taken a break from QMing for a time. When exercising with all Quizzing tools, QMs should seek out edge cases to explore and become completely comfortable with every tool in detail prior to each meet.

When first arriving on site at a quiz meet, a QM’s only priority should be to setup the QM’s assigned room in full, with a single exception: responding to quick questions. If asked a question, the QM should provide the answer, if it can be done quickly, but then immediately refocus on room setup. If the answer can’t be provided quickly, ask to defer the question until after room setup or refer the questioner to the magistrate community and other leadership.

Room setup includes but is not limited to: furniture relocation, trigger set layout and testing, Quizzing tools full operation testing (such as loading QuizSage, providing the meet’s QM password, and verifying successful authentication via all meet quizzes becoming available for magistration). All quiz rooms must be 100% setup and tested in full prior to the start of the meet’s start, likely the initial welcoming announcements.

Quiz Operations

Magistrates must manage the phases of quiz operations with consistency, fairness, and professionalism.

Startup and Management

Immediately prior to every quiz, QMs should retest trigger light operations. This can be done in a couple of seconds if the QM holds their reset switch on and asks quizzers to trigger. A more time consuming approach can be to ask quizzers to individually trigger and say their name. Both options are acceptable if time is not a factor; however, QMs should use the fastest means unless they’re ahead of schedule.

The QM may elect to perform a set of “practice triggers,” the purpose of which is to help quizzers learn the QM’s cadence and style. QMs should only perform “practice triggers” when ahead of schedule. Since the purpose is to help quizzers adjust to the specific QM, “practice triggers” should ideally demonstrate the QM’s cadence and style. They should match real queries as much as possible without being real queries; which is to say, QMs shouldn’t use real queries but should use mocks that resemble the cadence and style of real queries.

Magistrates are the primary time managers of a meet. Queries should not be rushed; in fact, the entire query process should remain measured and consistent regardless of a quiz’s time state or the meet schedule. To manage time, magistrates must instead focus on the space between queries. QMs should rule as quickly as possible without sacrificing ruling accuracy. QMs should avoid superfluous conversation and encourage expeditious movement of the quiz to the next query. The moment a quiz fully concludes (following the announcement of final score), the QM should call the teams for the next quiz and remain vigilant to the state of the room and location of the next quiz’s teams.

Queries

Magistrates should recite query preambles and prompts in a predictable manner. QMs should recite at a slightly slow pace, in a monotone or “boring” voice. QMs should avoid moving their head when reciting. Above all, QMs should strive for absolute consistency.

QMs should strive to stop reciting as soon as possible following a trigger; but even more importantly, QMs should be as consistent as possible in their stopping. Recitation “bleed” (additional syllables a QM speaks following a trigger) ideally should be nil. Longer bleeds lead to higher error rates, which are counter-missional. Practically speaking, however, a small but consistent and therefore predictable bleed is better than bleed that oscillates between tiny and nil.

QMs are required to start the countdown timer simultaneously with their call of the quizzer’s name. QMs are forbidden from calling the quizzer’s name and thereafter looking for the button or field to start the timer. QMs, after stopping their recitation, should take as much time as necessary to prepare to start the countdown timer at the same time as the call of the quizzer’s name.

Rulings

Magistrates must follow the rule book in full, and the rule book is objective; thus, rulings should never be subjective. Since all rulings are objective, all rulings should be theoretically fully explainable solely by reference to the rule book, query data, and source material. When ruling a quizzer incorrect, the QM should provide an explanation based on a quote from or paraphrase of a portion of the rule book. In most cases, QMs won’t need to explain correct queries since such rulings should be obvious; however, should any questions arise from anyone, the QM as ambassador should provide answers and if requested a full explanation. If a QM at any time feels unable to provide a full, objective explanation, the QM should consider this a signal they’re insufficiently prepared to QM.

Synonymous rulings should never be subjective. If a QM feels like saying, “I think you’re close enough,” or “I think you’re not close enough,” this is a signal the QM is insufficiently prepared to QM. QMs providing synonymous rulings on responses that are not verbatim correct must reference the official thesaurus to obtain an objective ruling, and as such, the QM should be able to explain the ruling fully and objectively.

QMs should assume they’re incorrect when it comes to identifying a word type (i.e. pronoun, preposition, etc.) until the QM verifies the word type by reference to the official thesaurus. If a word is not of an exempted type, and the QM can’t find a synonym in the list of synonyms, the response is not correct. Ever. Even if the QM thinks it should be. If the QM thinks the response should be synonymously correct, note the word of the verse and the word the quizzer provided, then raise it to the magistrate community and other leadership after the meet.

If there’s ruling that seems wrong to a QM, the QM should rule that way anyway, then work with the magistrate community and other leadership to patch the rule. The rules and official thesaurus can be patched between meets, but never, ever during a meet. To do anything else results in subjective and unfair rulings, which is counter-missional.

Quizzers with time remaining on their countdown timers are not incorrect if they provide incomplete information. For example, a quizzer saying “Luke 3:1” instead of “Luke 3:1-2” after calling for add a verse with reference is not incorrect; they are simply incomplete. If, however, a quizzer’s response is incomplete once their countdown timer reaches 0, the quizzer is incorrect.

Scores

Magistrates, as ambassadors, should detail all scoring events where there are team points or whenever a quizzer earns more than 2 points. For example, “Synonymous 2, with reference +1, add a verse +1, third-quizzer bonus +2, follow-on bonus +1; for a total of 7.”

QM’s should recite total team scores at least every 4 queries and whenever requested.

Appeals

The purpose of appeals is not to be right nor become right but to determine what is right. The appeal process exists to improve rulings so they’re accurate, objective, consistent, clear, and thereby fair. The magistrate community must foster a culture of encouraging appeals with eager listening and considered responses. QMs should not just be open to appeals but genuinely excited about them. QMs should encourage appeals. QMs should treat appeals as an opportunity to educate and be educated.

QMs should always assume appeals are valid and that the prior ruling was incorrect until the QM can prove otherwise by direct reference to the rule book, query data, and source material. A QM’s response to an appeal must directly reference evidence unless it’s obvious to the QM that they made a mistake; then just correct the mistake.

Before the QM moves on, the QM should ensure 100% of teams, coaches, and quizzers agree with the ruling.

Migration to Excellence

Long-term, the goal of the magistrate community and other leadership should be to migrate from competency to quality, from good to great, from effectiveness to excellence.

Constant Improvement

All magistrates should be persistently looking for way to improve. This necessarily requires self-reflection shortly after each meet. All magistrates should query themselves:

Recruitment and Training

All magistrates should be persistently looking for magistrate candidates. QMs should encourage and recruit these candidates, and the magistrate community should work collaboratively to train and equip these candidates for success.

Accountability and Removal

All magistrates should be persistently evaluating if any in their ranks should step back from QMing for a time. Ideally, a magistrate should be self-aware of slips in quality (for any reason or no discernable reason) and recuse themselves from QMing temporarily if practically possible. However, often it’s difficult to self-assess; so the magistrate community has a responsibility to hold each of its members accountable to excellence, which will unfortunately require at times asking a QM to step back from officiating for a while.

The goal is not a magistrate community that is merely competent but one that is optimized for missional outcomes.