Yo what's up, I'm Adam. I'm a flay judge who would love to see any jokes or a little bit of fun during the debate. Be respectful as always tho

I am a new judge. I will do my best

Hi, I’m Victor. I debated a wee bit of PF for Canyon Crest but am now RETIRED!!! (nonchalant)

Email chain - @victor.r.cociorva@gmail.com

~~~~~ Novices ~~~~~

My paradigm is a lil long and kinda incoherent at times so here's the tldr: Standard tech judge. I care a lot about good warranting (the implict reasoning behind your claims) and slowing down to emphasize key points of contention in the backhalf. Use good ballot directive language in Final Focus that compares your reasons why you should win with your opponents'. I care a lot about weighing (comparing your impacts with your opponents'), it's probably the easiest way to win my ballot provided you win your case as well.

Signposting (organizing your speech by telling me where you are on the flow i.e 'on their second contention...'), is super super helpful. It makes you way easier to follow which will probably increase your chances of winning and definitely increase your speaks.

Don’t read prog pls it’s probably not gonna be fun for anyone if no one understands what’s going on. Framework doesn’t count as prog though, so feel free to read that if you want.

Let's have a chill round! Obviously I take judging seriously but there's no reason to make the round a super intense environment. Debate is a game, and games are supposed to be fun.

If you wanna try and read my more in depth rambling below, I've marked the stuff more relevant to novices with a ★.

~~~~~ General Stuff ~~~~~

• ★ Tech > Truth, but remember that truth does have an effect on tech. The further you stray away from truth, the more technical work needs to be done to make up for it. (i.e the claim ‘Escalation with China causes nuclear war’ doesn’t need as much warranting as ‘Cartel violence causes nuclear war’)

• Any speed is fine, but you NEED TO SEND DOCS BEFORE SPEECH AND MARK THEM AFTER.

• Good for any argument. I like progressive debate a lot and am open to any model of debate as long as you can justify it. I dislike how much ‘poorly executed prog’ is discouraged in PF as I know it can make it super intimidating to learn. That being said, I do believe that you shouldn’t read prog unless you know your arguments inside and out. It’s very obvious when you just copy pasted a theory shell from someone’s wiki and can barely understand half of the standards, and even more so for copy pasted Ks. I think progressive debate is only productive if debaters can effectively engage with the arguments, and if you aren’t able to explain your arguments well and contextualize them to the round, neither you OR your opponent will be learning much.

• ★ I try and evaluate rounds systematically with *hopefully* as little intervention as possible. That means I need you guys to do a lot of work emphasizing WHY you’ve won your arguments and WHY I should vote on them. In an ideal Final Focus, I should be getting a very clear ‘path to the ballot’ that tells me a reason to vote for you and why it matters more than the reasons of your opponents. The best way to win my ballot is to not only be able to defend your path to the ballot, but also explain to me why your opponent’s path to the ballot is worse.

• ★ The thing that matters most to me is warranting, especially in the backhalf of the round. I would much rather you have solid reasoning behind everything you say in your Summary/Final but undercover the flow than cover everything with one-liner blips. This is not only important for my ballot, but will probably be the greatest factor affecting your speaks.

~~~~~ Substance ~~~~~

NOTE FOR JOHN LEWIS: I’ve been checked out of debate for a lil bit so I don’t really have any topic knowledge. You don’t need to overexplain too much since this Taiwan topic seems pretty straightforward, but make sure to call your opponents out if they say something untrue because otherwise I’ll just believe everything y’all say.

• ★ My conditions to vote for a team are having a unique advantage/disadvantage to the resolution that is impacted out and weighed to matter more than your opponent’s advantage/disadvantage. You can do this by either a) winning your case and outweighing your opponent’s case OR b) winning your case and winning defense on your opponent’s case. Or go above and beyond and do both!

• ★ Some clear standards: Second Rebuttal must frontline. Weighing needs to be in Summary (sorta lenient on First Final weighing but please just do it in Summary). Every argument from the fronthalf that you want in Final Focus needs to be in Summary. Everything you want me to consider in my decision needs to be in Final Focus. No new cards in backhalf except maybe for first summary frontlines but don’t push it.

• Smart, strategic weighing is a great way to win my ballot and boost your speaks. I love well-warranted prereqs (that aren’t huge stretches), internal link comparisons, and contextual analysis of the relevance of your links to your impacts.

• ★ I’ll evaluate on risk by default but can easily be persuaded to evaluate probabilistically instead with the right warrants. Probability weighing is real, but new defense in summary under the guise of probability weighing won’t be evaluated. If you want to read something like ‘mutually assured destruction makes nuke war improbable’, that needs to be in Rebuttal.

• ★ Please please please resolve the weighing debate for me. If both teams read prereqs that contradict each other, I won’t know what to do and need to intervene. Same goes for drastically differing ways of evaluating the round -- you need to comparatively explain to me why I should evaluate based on probability instead of risk, or vice versa.

• Try or die is broken -- if the aff wins that the status quo leads to extinction and they have a FRACTION of solvency, they get my vote. Obviously I’m going to vote for the only world in which we have a chance of not going extinct. Neg teams gotta read more impact and uniqueness D if they don’t want to just insta-lose to try or die.

• Ppl tend to hate on magnitude weighing a lil too much. Obviously it’s a little underwhelming if it’s your only mechanism but I evaluate util by default so in a situation where, for example, you have a climate change impact versus a recession impact and there aren’t any finicky prereqs/short circuits coming in from the other team, feel free to just go hard on magnitude as your win condition.

• ★ Extensions are not that important -- they aren’t a yes/no situation that makes or breaks your offense, they’re just a way for you to clarify and spike out clash. As long as I’m getting an idea of the argument that I’m voting on in the backhalf speeches, you’ve done all extensions you ‘need’ to do.

• I value good evidence comparisons, but they need to be implicated. I especially appreciate nuanced evidence comparison, like methodology or specificity.

• I heavily mess with a good framework debate. Framing needs to be introduced by first rebuttal at the absolute latest though, and I’m not a fan of blippy paraphrased versions of framing being read as just normal weighing in the backhalf. (i.e reading future gens on an extinction impact, or reading intervening actors in place of SV)

~~~~~ Progressive ~~~~~

• Coming from a big fan of prog -- these arguments (especially Ks) are a little awkwardly adapted to PF. But run them anyways -- they make for fun rounds and educational experiences.

Theory:

• Defaults: No RVIs, Competing Interps, DTD.

• I have a very systematic way of viewing theory debates -- I’d love for y’all to perfectly fit my standard for a good theory round but obviously I can’t expect y’all to read my mind and know exactly what I want so just know that debates that fully collapse on theory might result in some slightly more interventionist decisions than I’m normally used to.

• OCIs are not RVIs. If you win that your opponent’s interp is bad and implicate why I should drop them for it, that is completely independent from the RVI debate.

• Interps need a brightline. I won’t hack against a vague interp but I’m pretty receptive to responses that call out the lack of a definition for what a ‘trick’ or ‘vague alt’ is -- but keep in mind I still need some implication as to why that should be treated as terminal defense on the shell (reasonability).

• Shell extensions are no different from extending normal arguments.

• I think reasonability is the best way to respond to most theory shells.

• I love seeing some RVI clash -- doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should.

Kritik:

• Be able to explain your arguments without over-reliance on buzzwords. I won’t vote for something I can’t understand.

• PF Ks are weird -- I think some level of neg fiat is needed for Ks to work, and I encourage topicality as a response since way too many teams let Ks get away with too much.

• I’d honestly rather watch a Kaff v Fwk or Kaff v K round than a Substance v K round but do whatever.

• I dislike it when Ks get unnecessarily niche without the team even understanding why their K needs to be that complex -- I feel like a lot of niche Ks are run in ways that could be much better generalized to just cap or setcol. PLEASE be able to explain why your K is different.

• Anything the K team proposes as their offense is fair game to me -- burden is on the aff to call them out on their BS and read theory (please don’t let a K team get away with reading straight up plan text for an alt or never clearly defining their alt).

• Go for perms!! I dislike lazy alts that barely have a warrant to compete with the aff so punishing that is a great way to win my ballot.

• BTW the aff can’t win solely by turning the alt -- remember that the round is a question of whether or not I should affirm. If the only offense the aff extends to the end of the flow is a disad to the neg’s alt, I don’t know what that has to do with me affirming the res and I’ll probably just presume squo.

• Call me biased if you want but if the aff’s K responses are spamming incoherent DAs and friv theory then their speaks aren’t gonna be very happy -- I’m a much bigger fan of perms, theory on the alt, and weighing against case, as these responses make for actually productive debates.

Kaffs:

• FLIP FIRST PLEASE! Super lame to just nullify an entire constructive that came before you -- I highly suggest that the neg go for the lost speech time as offense + I won’t be nice to the aff’s speaks if they intentionally go second.

• Kaffs should probably engage with the res. How you do that is up to y’all to define though. That means I’m not the biggest fan of identity Ks unless they find a way to tie themselves to the topic in some way shape or form. (Ofc, I’ll still evaluate an identity K if you want to run it. Change my mind!)

• Ballot directive language >>>>>> buzzwords. I’d prefer if Kaffs could clearly contextualize the ballot as early as possible so I know what’s going on.

• Kaffs need to have a coherent counter-model of debate -- I want to have a vision of what I’m actually voting for, rather than just upping you because the debate space is bad.

• K v K debates are awesome and don’t happen often enough in PF -- I’ll be jumping for joy for even something as mundane as capk.

• Impact turns > CIs -- let’s not kid ourselves your CI isn’t gonna make much sense by the end of the round. I’d much rather you just turn their model of debate than try and say you don’t completely upend it, but do whatever you want.

Trix:

• I lowk don’t have many specific thoughts on these. They’re funny.

• I’ll be SO REAL WITH YOU!!! I do not understand truth testing as a framework. I don’t get the purpose of reading it or what ‘proving the truth or falsity of the res’ even means. If you want to read trix on me I’d just add a lil disclaimer dumbing down the implication of the framing (basically just explicitly tell me what I need to take away from the fwk debate please.)

• Don’t hide them in the speech doc.

• I’d prefer trix that are actually somewhat argumentatively compelling but do wtv.

IVIs:

• Not much to say on these either. I don’t like them. They just seem like a lazy way to have an underdeveloped pre-fiat debate, but I can see how they can sometimes be necessary.

• I need an implication as to WHY ITS A VOTER!!!! (Not the same as DTD) If you don’t specifically warrant to me as to why this issue should be something that I even consider into my ballot, I won’t vote on it -- otherwise you could read an IVI on your opponents having a mid outfit and that’d be the only prefiat offense in the round.

~~~~~ Miscellaneous ~~~~~

• ★ Be nice.

• ★ I have a burning hatred for the way evidence gets exchanged in PF. It’s tedious and a huge waste of time. Please just send docs with all evidence before speech, at least for Constructive but ideally for Rebuttal as well.

• I’ll probably be on my phone during cross. If something important happened call it out in a later speech.

• Email chain or Speechdrop for evidence sharing please, not Google docs.

• Post-Rounding is good and educational. If you disagree with me, feel free to have a conversation with me about the decision but let’s keep things civil and avoid direct contradiction. You can also email me after round with any further questions you have.

• I generally give good speaks, and try to keep them contextual to the division y’all are competing in. I probably won’t give below a 28.5 unless you were problematic or made my job really difficult.

Have fun in your round and be confident in yourself. Respect your team mate and the other team throughout the round including during cross. You can be firm and aggressive, but it should be respectful. Speed is not an issue as long as you speak clearly. Articulate the impact and showcase how you understand the arguments you are making, be consistent, and indicate why your impacts outweigh.

Rounds are meant to be fun and you should go for any argument you feel comfortable defending, that being said it is your job to tell me the link at every level. Don't assume that I'll make the link, show me your work and tell me how you access your impacts. Be kind to your opponents, you can be assertive and strong in cross, but it doesn't mean you have to be rude. Jargon is ok but you better understand what you are saying and how it applies to a case, don't just say weighing or scope if you can't show me what those things actually mean. I can be fairly expressive in rounds, don't read into my non-verbal reactions!

Hello debaters! Please read this paradigm carefully before the round begins.

• This is my first tournament judging PF! I'm usually a Policy judge.
• I am myself a fast speaker so I can generally flow other fast speakers. However, I do not think spreading / purposefully making it challenging for your opponents to catch your arguments is very good debating and will dock speaker points accordingly.

Expectations

1. Professionalism
   • Professional attire and demeanor are expected
   • Be respectful to your opponents and judge
   • No talking during opponent speeches
   • Remain engaged throughout the round
2. Evidence and Arguments
   • Clearly explain your evidence and warrants
   • Include all relevant dates and qualifications when citing sources
   • Be prepared to send called cards via email within 30 seconds
   • Evidence should be accessible and formatted for easy reading
3. Time Management
   • Keep your own time
   • Protect your prep time
   • Signal when you have 30 seconds remaining
   • Stop speaking when time is called

Judging Philosophy

• I value clear explanations over speed
• Weigh impacts explicitly
• Extend arguments through all speeches
• Tell me exactly why you win the round in Final Focus
• Dropped arguments are considered true but must be warranted