Handle Officiating and Formal Disputes

The officiating workspace is scoped to a single tournament — everything described on this page happens inside a tournament's own officiating area, not at the project level. It is designed for referees and moderators who handle formal cases: disputes submitted by participants, conduct reports, and rule violation reviews. Each case has a full timeline, attached evidence, and a rulings workflow with penalties and an independent publication step.

Where to find it

Project → Officiating gives you a cross-tournament hub: a list of tournaments with counts of open cases and active assignments. Click into a tournament to reach its officiating workspace, where the actual case handling happens.

Inside a tournament's officiating workspace you'll find:

• Overview — summary of open cases and current assignments for this tournament
• Assignments — bulk-assign referees to matches, run a conflict-of-interest check, and see your own current assignments
• Matches — a per-match monitor with an action log and match-level controls
• Cases — the case queue and, per case, the ruling history
• Profiles — the directory of referees and officials assigned to this tournament
• Certifications — official certifications and expiry alerts
• Analytics — officiating performance reporting with export
• Publication — a readiness check and prepare step for releasing rulings publicly

The dashboard, case queue, and assignment views update in real time as officials claim cases, log actions, or submit rulings.

What you see

• Assignments — which referees are currently assigned to which matches in this tournament, plus a conflict-of-interest check before you confirm a bulk assignment
• Case queue — all open cases (disputes, reports, rule violations), sorted by submission time
• Recent actions — a feed of recent officiating decisions for audit and awareness
• Case detail view — the full timeline of a single case: submission, evidence, notes, communications, and rulings
• Rulings — the form to issue a formal decision on a case
• Publication readiness — each case shows its own publication status, plus any blockers or warnings preventing release

Step by step

Handle a dispute

1. A dispute reaches the case queue either because a participant submitted it via the Appeals flow or because staff created it internally from an issue.
2. Open the case from the Case queue.
3. Claim the case if it isn't already assigned to you.
4. Review the case timeline: read the original submission, any attached evidence, and prior notes.
5. Add your own notes as you investigate. Notes are internal by default.
6. Contact parties through the case if needed — the case record logs all communications.
7. When you have enough information, click Create draft ruling.
8. Fill in the ruling: an outcome (for example upheld, overturned, modified, rematch ordered, no action, or escalated), the authority level under which you're ruling, and a summary and rationale explaining the decision.
9. If the ruling needs to affect standings, apply a report, hand off to transparency, or escalate to governance or live operations, set those effects on the ruling.
10. Save the ruling. It starts out pending review — you and other staff can revisit and refine it before it's finalized.
11. If the case warrants a penalty (for example a warning), use Add penalty on the ruling to record it.

Manage referee assignments

1. Go to the tournament's Officiating → Assignments page.
2. Use Bulk assign to staff multiple matches with referees at once.
3. Run the conflict check before confirming assignments to catch a referee who shouldn't officiate a given match.
4. Your own current assignments are listed separately so you always know what you're covering.

Review the match officiating view

1. Go to the tournament's Officiating → Matches and open a match.
2. The match monitor shows the action log for that match and any cases tied to it.
3. Officials can log actions here as they happen during the match.

Publish rulings

Publication is a separate step from issuing a ruling — it isn't a toggle you set while ruling. Go to the tournament's Officiating → Publication page, run the readiness check, and review any blockers or warnings it surfaces. Once the tournament is ready, use Prepare to move rulings toward release. Each individual case also shows its own publication status independently, so you can see whether a specific ruling is blocked before running the tournament-wide check.

Certifications and analytics

• Certifications lists the certifications held by officials assigned to the tournament and flags ones that are expiring soon, so you can line up a replacement before they lapse.
• Analytics reports on officiating activity and performance for the tournament, with an export option for offline review.
• Profiles is the directory of officials working the tournament, each with their own detail page.

What happens next

If a case originated from an appeal submitted by a participant, the appeal record lives in Governance. See the Appeals section in the Governance and Trust category.

If the dispute requires immediate action before a formal ruling is complete, open the match from the tournament's Matches list to correct its score or flag it with a dispute — or, if play needs to stop more broadly, use the tournament-wide pause in Live → Control Room. See Match interventions.

For issues that have not yet escalated to a formal case, see Issue management.