The protocol
How a Kwickdo contest actually runs
From brief to payout, with every mechanism that keeps it honest spelled out. If something here isn’t clear enough, that’s a bug — tell us.
Pick a brief
Every contest page shows the brief, the four scoring criteria, the prize split, the deadline and the full judge panel with credentials — before you enter.
Make the work
You keep your copyright. Entering grants us a display licence only. Brand contests state their commercial terms in plain English on the page.
Submit anonymously
Your upload is stored against a random token. Metadata is stripped. Judges never receive anything else.
The panel scores
Each judge scores each criterion 1–10 independently, without seeing other judges’ scores. Conflicts of interest are flagged and excluded.
Results publish
Weighted averages calculated, rank percentiles assigned to every entrant — not just the top three. Then identities unlock.
Get paid and credentialed
Cash within five business days. A public profile page showing the contest, panel, criteria and where you placed.
Integrity
The six mechanisms that stop this becoming a popularity contest
Anti-gaming controls built into the system rather than promised in a terms page.
Insert-only score records
A score, once submitted, cannot be edited — by a judge or by us. The database enforces one score per judge per entry.
Panel agreement published
We publish how much the panel agreed on each contest. Low agreement is visible to you, not hidden.
Conflict-of-interest flagging
A judge who recognises an entry declares a conflict. Their score is excluded and the average recalculated.
Append-only audit log
Every state change — open, close, score, publish — is written to an immutable log with actor and timestamp.
Blindness in the schema
Judges read from a database view that has no creator column. It is not a policy we follow; it is a structure we cannot bypass.
Metadata stripped on upload
EXIF, GPS, device and author fields are removed by re-encoding before a file ever reaches the panel.
Scoring
Four criteria. Twenty-five percent each.
No single judge can swing a result on gut feel alone, and no criterion silently dominates. Each category has its own rubric written by professionals working in it.
Art
Photography
Design
Writing
Music
Video
The panel
Who is judging your work
Every judge is named and credited on the contest page before entries open. No anonymous panels, no undisclosed sponsors sitting on juries.