Required time frame for judging?

Is there a required time frame for judging shows after they run? Considering people pay real money for these, there should really be a requirement to judge them within 14 days of closing or something like that... Maybe a temporary suspension if that's not followed? If not rectified, or repeated, it eventually becomes a ban?

Honestly, as often both a judge and an enterant myself, I don't think suspensions or bans should be a thing, especially after two weeks. At least for judging delays. Come on, life happens. Often.

And also as often, classes and divisions are huge - sometimes up to 100+ models in OF classes. It takes time to look over each one, even briefly. I myself work from home and that's one of main reasons I choose to judge OFs - I have the time to take care of those huge classes. Also sometimes judges are working on other classes, where one's horses are not placed - so there is progress, just not noticed by some.

I think much better solution would be to encourage some public show updates, in easily accessible place, for example on the show page maybe? Not sure how possible/difficult that would be to do with how website is coded. I know not everyone uses forums and might miss the info here.

That's what I for example miss, updates from hosts when judging is getting delayed (like 2 months of no progress)

I know OMHPS team was asking for updates in older shows, but it would be amazing if the response could be shared somewhere publicly (without personal details of course). A lot of people would be willing to wait if they know what's going on.

This is an issue that has come up before..

As both a show host & judge I make sure to include a JUDGING TIME FRAME when setting up my shows;

as in: "we hope to have all classes judged and the show concluded within 2 - 4 weeks"

This is an indication that classes will judged in a responsible & timely manner— not dragged out for months on end.

If a showholder cannot take responsibility for judging their show in a timely manner (within a month, at the most), then they shouldn't be hosting any shows at all, let alone judging, IMO.

My .02¢.

Officially, there is no rule for a specific time frame for shows to be completed since the individual situations tend to vary. As Endless pointed out, shows can be quite large, things can come up outside of the hobby, and proper judging takes time. Many people have full-time jobs and lives outside of the hobby so they may only be able to dedicate a few hours a week on judging. Requiring judging to be done in only 14 days could discourage a lot of people from hosting at all, which would result in fewer shows to enter.

That said, we do keep track of when shows have last had progress in judging, and if no progress has been made in 3 months we email the host and attempt to gently nudge them to finish or ask if they need help in completing the task. If they do not respond, we retire their show so entries don't remain open. Repeat offenders are barred from hosting future shows, though so far we have not had that happen (luckily).

Right now, all but two shows currently judging have had progress made in the last month (the majority within the last week). One other had progress within the last three months, and the one show that has not had progress was in contact with us 3 months ago when we last made check-ins with intent to finish. I do think it is a good suggestion to make these status updates known publicly so that people aren't left wondering, so we will workshop that in the background :)

If the show is retired, are entrants able to seek a refund through PayPal?

I understand life happens, but there seems to be a large backlog of unjudged or still judging shows. I doubt every one of those hosts has had a crisis arise.. Especially without recieving updates, as an entrant, I imagine it feels like you paid for a service and then didn't recieve that service. Like @appaloosa said, in my opinion, if you can't judge in a timely manner, you shouldn't be hosting. It's a paid service that you are providing, it's a professional transaction.

I do think adding updates for entrants would help, and I'm also glad to hear that hosts are banned from hosting if this happens too often. (That's what I meant when I suggested a ban in the first place, though I think that may have been misinterpreted by some.)

That would be up to the entrants to decide if they wish to pursue a refund. OMHPS has no direct involvement with any transactions via Paypal/outside platforms, so we really have no means to do anything regarding payments. We do try as best as we can to get in contact with the hosts before retiring anything, especially paid shows, and have even stepped in to finish judging for hosts (with their permission) so that entrants aren't left hanging. It is extremely uncommon for a paid show to be retired (in fact I'm not sure it's ever been done). Retiring shows, in general, is uncommon.

As I explained, pretty much all currently judging shows have very recent progress made in judging. It's not that they aren't judging at all, no crisis is necessarily involved. There are even a few on the currently judging tab that are actually all done, they just haven't hit the final conclude show button yet. It can be understandably frustrating to not see progress in a show you're entered in, in which case the first thing to do is to contact the host. I believe there are also groups similar to the transaction board outside of this website that post reviews on photo shows/show hosts. And if the host is not responding and is taking a considerable amount of time/seems entirely inactive, you can always email omhps@omhps.com and we will do what we can to get some sort of update or step in where necessary. We do keep an eye on it fairly closely behind the scenes.