Abbas Naaseri / Usually in football refereeing, from the time when the Belgian referee John Langenus officiated the first FIFA World Cup final in 1930 between Uruguay and Argentina, to Pierluigi Collina—the most charismatic referee in football history—and even today’s referees, the situation has remained essentially the same.
Whether in the past, when three or four officials with a whistle and two flags judged the match, or today, when six or seven officials are supported by numerous cameras and VAR technology, the final word is still spoken by one person: the referee in the middle of the pitch.
Naturally, the responsibility for all decisions rests with him, and everything is ultimately attributed to the referee in the middle.
Because he has full authority, he may choose to ignore his assistant’s flag, dismiss the advice of the VAR room, and with a single whistle, determine the fate of a match.
In artistic judging, however, decisions are usually made collectively by a jury.
The fact is that no judge can claim that they alone determine the fate of a festival.
If such a claim is made—even if it happens to be true—we would have to question not only the judge’s mental health, but also the integrity of the judging process and the festival itself.
The very nature of collective judging is such that no single person can have the final say.
In a five-member jury, for example, two judges may strongly oppose a particular artwork; yet if the other three view it positively, the chances of that work’s success increase.
Therefore, one cannot claim that an artwork’s success or rejection is the result of the unanimous opinion of all the judges.
In sports, the referee in the middle of the field is a single individual, and full responsibility rests entirely on them.
In artistic adjudication, no one judge ever holds complete decision-making power.
In a two-member jury, responsibility is divided equally at fifty percent; with three judges, each has just over thirty percent; with four, twenty-five percent; and this pattern continues with five-, seven-, or nine-member juries.
In a seven-member jury, where each judge’s input accounts for roughly fifteen percent of the overall result, even if the outcome differs from an individual’s expectation—say only forty percent—the best possible decision has likely been reached.
Even though mathematics plays a major role in this process, it cannot capture the love we feel for cartoon.
We will explore these issues in detail next week.
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Weekly Single Page of Cartoonmag
No 66
Saturday , 03 January 2026
This single page has been prepared to remind the news and calls published on the cartoon magazine website and it is supposed to be published every Saturday.
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