Competition Rules

A PALMA season runs the same way each year. Nominations open, nominations close, a shortlist is screened, a panel judges, finalists are announced, and winners are announced. Every one of those dates is published before the season opens, and PALMA does not move a closing date to accommodate a campaign.

1. INominations open. Anyone may nominate, free, for as long as the window is open.
2. IINominations close. Nothing submitted after the published closing time is counted, including submissions begun before it.
3. IIIScreening. Every nomination is reviewed by a person for eligibility and integrity before it reaches a judge.
4. IVJudging. Eligible candidacies are scored independently by the panel.
5. VFinalists announced. The top-ranked candidacies in each category are published.
6. VIWinners announced. The honour is conferred, entered in the Roll of Honour, and given a verification record.

1. IA creator must be 18 or over at the time the work was published and at the time the honour is conferred.
2. IIThe work must have been publicly available during the season’s eligibility window, which is stated on each category page.
3. IIIThe work must be the creator’s own. Work made by a team may be nominated where the nominated creator was materially responsible for it.
4. IVA creator may be nominated in more than one category, and may hold honours in more than one season.
5. VA creator whose work falls outside the PALMA content policy is not eligible, in any category, at any time.
6. VIJudges, PALMA staff and their immediate families are not eligible in any season in which they serve.

The division is the whole design of PALMA: the audience identifies, PALMA investigates and judges. A nomination tells the panel where to look. It does not tell the panel what to conclude.

1. IA nomination is a category, a creator, and a reason of between 20 and 250 characters. No account, no upload, no evidence bundle.
2. IIBefore a nomination can be submitted, the email address given must be confirmed with a 6-digit code, valid for 15 minutes, with 5 attempts.
3. IIIOne valid nomination per person, per creator, per category, per season. The database enforces it; a second attempt is refused rather than silently discarded.
4. IVA creator may nominate themselves, and may share a referral link asking their audience to nominate them. Both are entirely legitimate.
5. VNomination counts are never published as a leaderboard, and are never a judging criterion. A creator with four hundred nominations does not start ahead of a creator with four.

PALMA expects creators to ask their audiences to nominate them. That is a real signal about a real following, and screening is calibrated to permit it. What screening looks for is the manufacture of people who do not exist.

The governing principle is that flagging is not rejecting. Almost every signal above results in a human being looking at a candidacy, and a human deciding. PALMA would rather review a hundred legitimate campaigns than reject one real audience.

1. IScreening confirms the creator exists, is eligible, is 18 or over, and that the work cited is real and within the window.
2. IIScreening removes nominations that breach the content policy, cite another person’s work, or are plainly fabricated.
3. IIIWhere nominations for one creator are combined, they form a single candidacy, the unit that is judged. Judges score candidacies, never nomination counts.
4. IVA screening decision may be appealed by the creator concerned under Complaints and Appeals.

1. IEvery eligible candidacy is scored independently by at least 3 judges.
2. IIThe criteria and their weights are published before a season opens and do not change during it. The weights above are the whole of the weighting: there is no undisclosed adjustment.
3. IIINomination volume is a discovery signal. It determines who PALMA investigates; it does not determine any outcome, and nothing in the judging path reads it.
4. IVJudges are briefed in writing to discount audience size, follower count and view count. None is a criterion, and none will become one.
5. VWhere four or more judges have scored a candidacy, the highest and lowest scores are removed before ranking, so one outlier cannot decide a PALMA.
6. VIA submitted score is immutable. A correction is made by a new, audited entry, never by editing the original.
7. VIIJudges declare conflicts of interest and are recused from any candidacy they have declared against. A recused judge cannot see that candidacy at all.
8. VIIIScores, remarks and deliberations are confidential, permanently. They are not shown to nominees, sponsors, the press, or the public.

The criteria and their weighting are published in full at /about/judging before each season opens.

1. IThe top 4 ranked candidacies in each category are proposed as finalists.
2. IIA proposal is never automatic. Confirming a shortlist, a finalist list or a winner is a human act by an authorised administrator, written to the audit log with the state before and after.
3. IIIWhere a category receives too few eligible candidacies to judge credibly, PALMA may decline to confer an honour in that category. It will say so publicly rather than lower the standard.
4. IVWinners are announced at the ceremony and entered into the Roll of Honour the same day, each with a verification record that can be checked by anyone, without an account.
5. VPALMA does not notify losing finalists privately in advance, and does not disclose rankings below first place.

PALMA may disqualify a candidacy, at any point up to and including announcement, where:

1. Inominations were purchased, automated, or submitted from addresses that do not belong to real people;
2. IIthe creator or a person acting for them attempted to contact, influence or induce a judge;
3. IIIevidence was fabricated, or work was claimed that is not the creator’s own;
4. IVthe creator is found to be under 18, or verification is found to have been falsified; or
5. Vthe creator’s conduct breaches the content policy.

The creator is told what the finding is and has ten working days to respond, except where a safeguarding or legal obligation requires PALMA to act immediately. A disqualification after announcement is a revocation, and the Roll of Honour records it as such rather than removing the entry.

1. IA sponsor cannot nominate on behalf of anyone, see a score, meet a judge through PALMA, or receive advance notice of an outcome.
2. IIA category partner’s name appears on the category page. That is the entire extent of its involvement in that category.
3. IIIPALMA refuses sponsorship that is conditional on an outcome, a shortlist place, or access to judging material, and will say publicly that it refused if asked.
4. IVWhere a sponsor has a commercial relationship with a nominee, that is disclosed on the category page.

The full position, including the editorial independence statement, is at /about/sponsors.

These rules carry a version and an effective date. A change never applies to a season already open, the rules a season opened under are the rules it is judged under. Questions about a season’s conduct go to concerns@palmaawards.com, and challenges go through Complaints and Appeals.