Last changed on
Tue May 7, 2024 at 2:56 AM MDT
>>> Short version:
Ex-Policy tab flow judge without strong technical background; tries not to judge PF and LD like they are Policy.
>>> Way too long version:
I am an ex-Policy debater, but from a time and place when Policy was less technical than it is today. Back then, it kind of resembled what we would see today in a faster, more evidence-heavy PF round. Speed had just started to get popular and argumentation was shifting away from focusing on stock issues and more toward focus on advantages/disadvantages. Although CPs, Ts and Ks were around, they were not well-liked by most judges and so most rounds would center around on-case and DAs since those were the arguments you could win on.
Policy:
As a Policy judge I consider myself tech>truth and tabula rasa. These are the judges I most enjoyed debating in front of, so this is the type of judge I am by default. That said, I do kind of groan when I have to listen to really bad generic DAs, really bad generic CPs, outlandish theory, Ks that even you don't understand at all, and throwaway Ts. But I understand it's all part of the Policy game to some extent, and I'll vote on this stuff (in Policy only). But I am happier if I can vote on good arguments instead of tricks or one tiny dropped part of a spread. I don't have a strong background in Ks, so if you are going to run one you will need to explain it for the layman and it will need to make sense to a layman-- frankly some Ks I cannot even flow without some added exposition because I have not a single solitary clue what the words being said mean as they are read off the page. You can read the whole entire K and my K flow sheet at the end will just say "buddy without Oregons ??? (scooby doo huh noise) ???". Although there are arguments that I personally like more or less, in general I will vote on anything that you can explain, win, and weigh. I've tried to learn the parts of "modern Policy" that are new to me, but it still is probably wise for very proficient Policy debaters to treat me as flay and slow down and explain the more technical args a bit. I don't give speed warnings; I expect you to know how fast you can go and remain understandable, and find that 99% of debaters do and it's usually not a problem. Although I can usually keep up with speed just fine in the "straightaways", I have noticed that in very fast rounds I sometimes lose the first part of a card or argument right after switching args. Because of this, if really speedy speedsters want to slow down just a bit during/after the signpost, take a quick breath, and give me a half second to find the right place on my flow, that would be great and prevent me from missing the first part of your next argument.
PF and LD:
In PF and LD, truth>tech.
I like all kinds of PF, both the slower more persuasive classic PF and the faster more evidence-heavy line-by-line PF. When rounds have a slower team against a faster team, I find that kind of tricky to judge. Obviously if I judged it like Policy, the faster team would almost always win. Because I like both styles and think they are both valid ways to do PF, generally this is how I judge PF so that slow teams can compete against fast teams: I flow the round using a Policy-style column flow, but I am much, much, much less strict about extensions and drops. I think a good argument made in PF can stand on its own without necessarily requiring an extension in every speech. And I will do some work on the flow if there are obvious ways that arguments interact, basically taking short leaps if I believe they are obvious and within the realm of how a lay judge would evaluate the round. I know it really stinks when judges put pieces together too much and you lose to arguments that your opponent did not even really make, so I try not to do that, but in general I believe PF should be judged by thinking humans and so your arguments should take into account the fact that the judge is able to think and reason. Basically in PF, I am an unbiased but normal, average, thinking lay human person who is open to being persuaded by the overarching story of the round. Each thing that gets said in the round is free to bounce around in my head and interact with each other thing, without needing to be told explicitly to be cross-applied or extended or whatever, it's all just a big soup of argumentation. Although I flow, I don't judge strictly off the flow, it is more of a personal notekeeping system than a gameboard. This is in contrast to Policy, where I am more of a strict argument-evaluating computer and the flow is the gameboard on which the round is won or lost. It seems to me like research and case writing are the critical parts of PF; it is usually very obvious which teams have spent time digging deeply into the evidence, reading beyond the highlights, and gaining a deep and nuanced understanding of the empirical facts; and those teams usually debate much better and are more persuasive regardless if they choose a faster or slower style.
I had no exposure to LD until I started coaching, but have really grown to like it. Basically all LD that I see in Wyoming is trad though, so if you are a competitor reading this at Nationals and you do progressive LD, it will essentially be my first time seeing that. My default way to judge LD is to treat the Value and Criterion like a framework or weighing mechanism. Because of this, it is very important to me that you don't ignore the value clash and that you tie your arguments back to the V/VC. The winning V/VC becomes the yardstick by which I measure the rest of what happens in the round and has a huge effect on what arguments end up mattering in the decision. If you ignore the V/VC, you will probably lose. Sometimes the V/VC debate is very close and hard to call, so it may be strategic to try to tie your args to both V/VCs just in case you end up losing the V/VC part of the flow ("even if x, y...")
General:
Generally speaking, a type of speech that I usually find persuasive and effective looks like this:
- Goes straight down the flow and explains why you win each point of clash, actually interacting with the point and not just reiterating what you previously said
- Extends the parts of the flow that had no clash (dropped stuff) that you still think important
- Does an overarching impact analysis, weighing, tying arguments back to framework or value. Explains broadly why winning the points you just discussed means that you win the round as a whole.
Definitely there is no one effective speech structure, this is just the type of speech that often leaves me thinking "dang, nice speech".
Speeches that I find not very persuasive do things like:
- Try to extend a point from your last speech but don't interact with the clash on that point. You ask me to extend something you said earlier in the round but do not interact at all with how your opponent answered that point. These types of "non-interacting extensions" are kind of not even flowable in my book. I really need at least one sentence of analysis explaining how your extension is able to hold, given the clash in the round on the point in question. Just saying "extend x" and no further explanation is not good enough when there is ANY clash on the point. When there's no clash, by all means "extend x" and move on.
- Similarly, trying to cross-apply without explaining how the point cross-applies. Just saying "cross-apply x" and moving on is not going to cut it unless it is extremely obvious how the cross-apply works. In general I would like to see at least one sentence of analysis explaining how the cross-apply cross-applies.
- Really vague impact analysis. I had in my paradigm last year that I liked weighing (which I do), and often people seemed to just throw in short vague debate camp statements like "outweigh on magnitude", "outweigh on probability". While that's better than nothing for sure, I would really love to see some more thoughtful analysis of how the impacts in the round stack up against each other and how they interact with any framework or value in the round.
- Only going line-by-line with zero overall analysis of the round. Even in Policy, I do like to see at least a little bit of overall summary beyond the line-by-line.
I don't really care that much about roadmaps. I'd prefer them off-time if you are going to do them just so they don't waste useful speech time. I do like signposting though especially in fast rounds.
I really prefer if everyone in the round is respectful to each other. I know it's debate and things can get heated, but let's keep it as civil as possible.
