I must first thank Obselescence and his fic contest for helping us develop our judging methods. If you haven't had a chance to sample some of the superb entries his contest garnered, I highly suggest you check them out.

Due to the anticipated size of the entry pool (and the corresponding depth of the prize pool), we will not be including a community voting phase for this contest. Instead, our panel of judges will do all the work for you, so here they are!

alexmagnet - Seattle's Angels mod, one of three Trixie enthusiasts
Alexstrazsa - EqD Pre-reader and life-binder
AugieDog - EqD Pre-reader
Burraku_Pansa - Mod for Seattle's Angels and The Royal Guard, WRITE co-founder
CouchCrusader - I run this thing. Sit down.
Ferret - EqD Pre-reader and avid fic commentator
Golden Vision - Founder of The Royal Guard and The Writeoff Association co-founder
John Perry - Royal Canterlot Library curator and M.A. Larson's next incarnation
Present Perfect - EqD Pre-reader and Royal Canterlot Library curator
Professor Plum - Seattle's Angels mod, World-Building Alliance mod, and everything else holy crap
RTStephens - More accomplished than CouchCrusader
Wanderer D - FimFiction moderator and founder of the World-Building Alliance

Disclaimer: Judges may react explosively if provoked. So, do it. Also, judge list is not necessarily finalized.

Judging will be split into two different phases as follows:

Phase 1: Group Stage

The finalized entry pool will be randomly split into groups and assigned to pods of three judges each. These judges will assess each entry and vote it up or down, with a majority verdict determining the entry's fate. Much as we appreciate the effort each and every one of you have put into your fics, our goal here is to reduce the size of the entry pool for the second phase as much as possible, so authors should not expect feedback on why their entry moved on or was relegated during this phase.

Unlike the World Cup, there is no limit to the number of entries that make it out of each group: some groups may yield two stories that move on out of thirty, while others may have fifteen or twenty move on. For those of you keeping score at home, do not worry about being placed in a "group of death" next to "superstar" entries, because their success has no bearing on your own.

We will continue to iterate on this process (splitting and voting, splitting and voting) until we get down to a reasonable pool size. From there, we head into...

Phase 2: Voting Stage

All judges will convene here and read through all entries in the finalist pool. Because we have ten artists providing prizes for this contest, each judge will assign a unique score from 1-10 to their top 10 stories from the pool. This means that, in a hypothetical finalist pool of 20, ten entries will receive a unique score from 1-10, while the other 10 entries will not receive a score.

Regarding how each entry gets scored, or what we're looking for in each story? Our judges are all very well-versed in what makes for good storytelling, and we have enough of them to minimize the impact of outliers. The best entries, in my opinion, will take both parts of the original prompt and take them somewhere honest, thought-provoking, and (because we're writing fics, after all!) fun:

Write a story...
- 1) about ponies
- 2) from a non-pony's point of view.

I must re-iterate that an entry that does not receive a score has still been read all the way through by the judge making that decision. The objective here is that each story in the finalist pool will be read by all judges to ensure the most consistency in scoring and to account for the certainty of scoring outliers.

Scores for each finalist entry will be tallied up, and the top 10 entries will be named as winners. We reserve the right to withhold the actual scores each entry received from contest entrants and the public.

Will you be informing us about the judging during the process, like for example telling which stories made it through the first lap, or do you only announce the winners at the end?

3524952

Pretty much what 3550135 said. I've been very curious about this myself.

3550135 3551641 Depending on the judge, they might comment on your story about their verdict or if they just liked it in general. I know Present Perfect (my judge ) did so, but I don't know if all of them are doing it.

3550135
3551641

I think I'm going to post an interim announcement on this group only specifying the stories that have moved onto the latter phase of judging -- shooting to do that this weekend. The winners, of course, will be announced on Equestria Daily (as well as here) pretty close to the 1st of September.

As we continue to work through the stories in the entry pool, I would like to remind everyone that only those people mentioned in the first post of this thread are judging the contest entries. I will not be counting, nor am I responsible for, any other judging other members of this fandom may provide, though you all are certainly welcome to chime in on the entries otherwise.

3562400

I can imagine the conversation that prompted a comment like that.
Author: "How dare Mr. X say that about my story!?! Your judges are all a bunch of ______!"
Crusader: "Mr. X isn't one of our judges."
Author: "... Oh."

3551927
The suspense is killing me.

3569592 Me too. I'll have results tonight.

3570160

tonight

Do you even time zones?

(sits down in the corner and grumbles to himself)

3570160
[anticiparion intensifies]

3570160

3571909
Just gonna drop this here...