No criterion is worth more than another. A criterion carries a title, a description and a score range, and nothing else. There is no weight to set, no primary criterion, and no way to make one dimension count double.
An entry's jury average is a plain mean, worked out in two steps.
- Each criterion is averaged on its own. The scores saved against that criterion are averaged together.
- Those figures are then averaged with each other, one value per criterion, to give the entry's average score.
Because step two treats every criterion as one value, a criterion scored by six jurors and one scored by two carry the same weight.
Who is in the average depends on whether results are out
Before a competition's results are announced, the panel shows your own scoring back to you. The score column is headed My Score. Once results are announced the same column becomes Avg Score, and each criterion is averaged across every juror on the competition. Entries are ranked by that average score, highest first.
An unscored criterion is skipped, not counted as zero
A criterion with no score is left out of the calculation rather than treated as a nought. An entry scored on two of four criteria is averaged over the two it has.
So an incomplete evaluation does not push an entry down the list. It makes the average rest on less evidence, which is the reason finishing your panel matters.
The range is what changes influence, not a weight
Every criterion carries its own minimum and maximum, and a new criterion is created with a range of 1 to 10. Nothing forces one round's criteria to share a range.
A mean of unequal ranges is not an equal contest: a criterion running 1 to 10 moves the average further than one running 1 to 5, even though neither is weighted. Organizers should keep one range across the whole set and settle it before scoring starts, because changing a range later does not revisit scores already saved.
A second figure appears on entry analytics
An entrant's analytics page shows an overall jury average worked out differently: a flat average over every score on the entry, without grouping by criterion first, so a criterion more jurors scored pulls harder there. Neither figure decides an award. How competition awards are decided covers what does.