wchamberlain
10-08-10, 12:10 AM
Will Chamberlain – Judging Philosophy
I debated for 4 years at University of the Pacific, including 3 years of NFA-LD debate. I currently coach parli and policy at the University of Oregon.
Cliffs Notes
Debate should be hard and educational. I believe very strongly in Will Repko’s basic approach to criticism, even if I differ on some specifics. You should read his philosophy if you haven’t already.
I think fairness is extremely important. Indict it at your peril.
***IMPORTANT*** You cannot waive your speech time in front of me. If you sit down in your PMC after four minutes, I think the LOC can take three minutes of prep. Yes, I have changed my mind on waiving the LOR, too.
Speed is not a problem. I flow on my laptop and type very quickly. I will be able to effectively transcribe your speech and quote your arguments back to you.
I am not fond of cheap shots. I am perfectly comfortable disregarding arguments if they do not meet a basic threshold of sense and explanation.
I am not fond of whining. If you collapse to SPEC in the block, I will probably stop flowing the debate.
I am not fond of asinine debates. I look very skeptically at counterplans that compete via normal means.
I disregard protected time rules, and expect teams to take questions on their advocacy texts.
***IMPORTANT*** I really hate the trend of having the non-speaking member of the team answer a POI while the other partner keeps making arguments. It is impossible to both get your question answered and keep flowing, which makes this very very unfair. Please do NOT do this.
Theory is a reason to reject the argument and not the team.
The link controls the direction of the link the vast majority of the time.
I am open to alternate frameworks for evaluating the round. That said, the aff probably should defend the implementation of a topical plan, for fairness reasons.
Whitman FR and SIU MS were my favorite teams to judge last year. This should give some indication of the type of debate I consider worthy of excellent speaker points.
JUDGING METHODOLOGY
In a high-flow round, I will normally take longer to make a decision than most other critics. This is because I am not thinking extremely hard about the round while it is happening – rather, I focus on transcribing the round as it occurs. I am confident enough in that transcription to use it as the complete basis for my decision. I try my best to type out a thorough and complete RFD that references all the relevant arguments. In a close debate, I will try to cut and paste the final rebuttal of the team I am voting against onto a separate sheet of paper, to make sure I have sufficiently evaluated each argument.
I also flow the LOR on a separate sheet. I do a lot of comparisons between the PMR and the LOR.
The reason I suggest you don’t indict fairness is because I feel it is the primary reason that I stay objective and flow-centric as a critic. If you were to win that fairness is bad, I consider that an indictment of an objective judging paradigm, and so I will revert to something more subjective. That probably involves punishing you for what I consider to be bad debate.
TOPICALITY
I believe very firmly n the importance of topicality. In the absence of pre-round communication, the topic provides the only possible Schelling point for preparation. If you are a K team and you wish to read your project on the aff, you would be advised to explicitly inform your opponents prior to prep time about the project you are reading. This is a necessary but not sufficient condition to win my ballot in a world where the negative reads framework or topicality in a competent fashion.
When it comes to evaluating topicality, I default to the lens of competing interpretations on the standards debate. I could be persuaded to use reasonability, though I have rarely heard a compelling justification for it, or an explanation for reasonability that wasn’t entirely arbitrary.
I believe that the distinction between potential and articulated abuse, in the context of T, is one without a difference. If your plan text deprives the negative of ground that they were entitled to by the resolution then you have been abusive, regardless of whether or not they read the position in the debate round.
What limits most is probably not what limits best. Interpretations that are faithful to the resolution probably limit best. Reading topicality, and then indicting things like field contextuality and grammar is unwise.
The topic does not oppress you. It does not deprive you of your agency. It is the foundation for a productive discussion in a competitive activity. Respect it.
OTHER PROCEDURALS
I am generally not fond of most other procedurals that the negative reads against affirmatives. As mentioned before, I look down on spec arguments. For me to even CONSIDER voting on a specification argument, the following conditions have to be met: 1) You must have asked a relevant POI. 2) You must have read an argument with a link relevant to your POI. 3) The affirmative must have linked out of the position via shifting out of their POI answer or relying on the fact that they failed to answer your POI. And the funny thing is, if this series of events occurs, then you wouldn’t need to read SPEC in the first place – an MO explanation of the aff’s abuse will be sufficient. Don’t worry about PMR “golden answers” in this case – I’m perfectly comfortable gut-checking an extremely abusive strategy.
So really, don’t read SPEC, it just pisses me off, and if you are the MG you should feel free to dismiss the argument with, as Aaron Hardy puts it, “maximum flippancy.”
I am, however, more open to procedurals based on over-specification. Affs should be wary of specifying more than they have to, especially if it links the neg out of intuitive ground. If you can justify your specification as normal means you will probably be ok, but you are better off having that debate on solvency.
I am also open to “mandate-specification,” otherwise known as vagueness. Unless explicitly part of the resolution, using a numbered, existing piece of legislation as your plan text is probably not kosher. All the core mandates of the plan should be in the text. ((By mandates I do not mean enforcement, funding etc., but the actual plan action.)
DISADVANTAGES
As mentioned earlier, I tend to evaluate disads link-first. In the real world, the probability of a bill passing is not zero or one. It is somewhere in between. The link debate would then determine whether or not the probability of an event decreases or increases. Thus, you would be wise to spend more time on the link debate than on the uniqueness debate.
That’s not saying you should do no work on uniqueness. A completely conceded uniqueness story will make it very difficult to win link turns. But once there are arguments going both directions, I’m probably going to assume that the link could go either way.
Defense is very valuable on disads, and MGs would be wise to spend more time on it. Obviously, defense alone won’t win you the debate round, but so long as you know where your offense is you should be fine.
COUNTERPLANS
As mentioned in the cliffs notes, I do not like counterplans that rely on normal means for competition. These counterplans detract focus from the question of whether or not the plan is a good idea. Consult, Delay, tiny PICS, Conditioned counterplans, Enforcement counterplans, etc. are lame strategies that I want to disregard if I am allowed to.
On the flip side, I am generally of the belief that conditionality is a good thing. I want teams to feel free to come up with advantage counterplans on the fly without necessarily being stuck to them. Most of the problems with conditionality are really caused by the counterplans themselves being lame, not the fact that they are run conditionally.
Further, I believe that theory is a reason to reject the argument, not the team, and I am near absolutist on this point. Reading your counterplan unconditionally is one of the only ways you could lose the debate on counterplan theory in front of me. So, be careful.
The only instance in which I might consider voting on theory is a nuanced conditionality shell. Even then, I would lean towards sticking the negative to their counterplan rather than rejecting the team outright. This also means that 5 minutes of theory in the PMR is probably not a winning strategy. You should probably go for something else too.
I do not need a counter-interpretation from the negative on counterplan theory. When you are reading counterplan theory, you are saying “We should have this rule.” If your opponents explain why the rule is a bad one, that is perfectly sufficient.
“THE K”
I like the K. A lot. I’m sure this will surprise many of you. But a year of judging bad econ debates has convinced me of the merits of the K. There are a few things you should keep in mind.
First, I have probably not read the literature behind your argument. I spend most of my time reading reactionary monarchist literature. You will need to explain your argument clearly and simply. If I do not understand your argument, I assume that is your fault and not mine.
Second, I am very open to impact turns on a lot of these arguments. Again, my politics lean reactionary, I’ll listen to patriarchy good, cap good, neolib good, whatever. I do try very hard to avoid letting my politics creep into my decision.
Third, you still have to be topical. Good K affs can defend the resolution and access their impacts simultaneously. I’m open to framework arguments from the affirmative that say certain impacts shouldn’t be weighed and certain arguments should be disregarded, but you still must be topical.
Fourth, I hate whining. I consider “K’s are cheating” and “The topic deprives me of my agency” to be equally asinine. If you want to win framework, you should be the team explaining why your argumentative choices make debate better broadly, rather than crying.
Fifth, I think in a world where two teams of equal skill are debating a K, the K will probably lose. My personal opinion is that the non-K team is ahead on a few key arguments. Don’t let this stop you from reading the argument – I vote on the K a lot.
REBUTTALS
I think most LOR’s are pretty terrible. Repeating your partner’s MO will result in mediocre speaker points. You should try to add value to the round, rather than giving the PMR four minutes of prep. That said, you can’t waive the LOR, so it might be time to figure out how to give it well.
I’m not really one to give the PMR “golden answers,” especially on the positions that came out new in the MG. I’m perfectly willing to evaluate your arguments. Going for something stupid in the PMR on the basis that the negative doesn’t get second lines is a bad strategy in front of me.
Impact calculus is very, very important, and few people do it. Rebuttals without impact calculus in rounds where there is plenty to be done will receive mediocre speaks. If you want better speaks than your member speaker, you have to do better than just repeating their arguments.
Call Points of Order on new arguments. I won’t allow blatantly new arguments in the absence of a point of order, but I will lean towards allowing an argument if it is close.
Do not call points of order to throw off your opponents. That will result in low speaks. Trust me, I can tell.
POIS
First, I do not believe in protected time. Second, I expect you to take questions on your advocacy texts related to clarification. Everybody in the round should understand what is going on. I probably consider not taking any questions on an advocacy text a voting issue. Further, denying clarification requests will result in low speaker points.
That said, if the other team starts using POIs to make arguments, feel free to shut them down for the remainder of your speech. In the absence of cross-x, this seems like the only fair compromise – you only ask POIs for clarification, and you take all the POIs the other team needs for clarification.
If you are doing something weird with framework, I expect you to take questions on that. If the subject matter of your arguments is complex and obscure, I expect you to take questions on that. Obfuscation = low speaks.
And finally, repeating from the cliffs notes, DO NOT have one speaker answer questions while the other is making arguments. I intensely dislike that.
SPEAKER POINTS
25-30. Below a 25 is for offensiveness, 26 is mediocre, 27 is below-average, 27.5 is average, 28 is good, 28.5 is very good, 29 is excellent, 30 is perfect. Perfection is rare. I gave out 3 30’s last year, all to the same debater. (guess who.)
I use speaker points to subjectively reward what I consider to be good debate, if that weren’t clear enough already. Smart, strategic, plan-focused debate is my favorite. Politics and Courts, even if executed perfectly, will max out at 29.
CONCLUSION
The overall point is this – leave your asinine arguments and asinine strategies at home when you are debating in front of me. I’ve seen enough bad debates to last me a lifetime. In all likelihood this is my last year in the activity. I’ll be damned if I spend it watching anything other than the best debates that y’all are capable of.
I’m going to try again to post all of my RFD’s online. Your ballot should contain a URL of some sort to check that out.
I debated for 4 years at University of the Pacific, including 3 years of NFA-LD debate. I currently coach parli and policy at the University of Oregon.
Cliffs Notes
Debate should be hard and educational. I believe very strongly in Will Repko’s basic approach to criticism, even if I differ on some specifics. You should read his philosophy if you haven’t already.
I think fairness is extremely important. Indict it at your peril.
***IMPORTANT*** You cannot waive your speech time in front of me. If you sit down in your PMC after four minutes, I think the LOC can take three minutes of prep. Yes, I have changed my mind on waiving the LOR, too.
Speed is not a problem. I flow on my laptop and type very quickly. I will be able to effectively transcribe your speech and quote your arguments back to you.
I am not fond of cheap shots. I am perfectly comfortable disregarding arguments if they do not meet a basic threshold of sense and explanation.
I am not fond of whining. If you collapse to SPEC in the block, I will probably stop flowing the debate.
I am not fond of asinine debates. I look very skeptically at counterplans that compete via normal means.
I disregard protected time rules, and expect teams to take questions on their advocacy texts.
***IMPORTANT*** I really hate the trend of having the non-speaking member of the team answer a POI while the other partner keeps making arguments. It is impossible to both get your question answered and keep flowing, which makes this very very unfair. Please do NOT do this.
Theory is a reason to reject the argument and not the team.
The link controls the direction of the link the vast majority of the time.
I am open to alternate frameworks for evaluating the round. That said, the aff probably should defend the implementation of a topical plan, for fairness reasons.
Whitman FR and SIU MS were my favorite teams to judge last year. This should give some indication of the type of debate I consider worthy of excellent speaker points.
JUDGING METHODOLOGY
In a high-flow round, I will normally take longer to make a decision than most other critics. This is because I am not thinking extremely hard about the round while it is happening – rather, I focus on transcribing the round as it occurs. I am confident enough in that transcription to use it as the complete basis for my decision. I try my best to type out a thorough and complete RFD that references all the relevant arguments. In a close debate, I will try to cut and paste the final rebuttal of the team I am voting against onto a separate sheet of paper, to make sure I have sufficiently evaluated each argument.
I also flow the LOR on a separate sheet. I do a lot of comparisons between the PMR and the LOR.
The reason I suggest you don’t indict fairness is because I feel it is the primary reason that I stay objective and flow-centric as a critic. If you were to win that fairness is bad, I consider that an indictment of an objective judging paradigm, and so I will revert to something more subjective. That probably involves punishing you for what I consider to be bad debate.
TOPICALITY
I believe very firmly n the importance of topicality. In the absence of pre-round communication, the topic provides the only possible Schelling point for preparation. If you are a K team and you wish to read your project on the aff, you would be advised to explicitly inform your opponents prior to prep time about the project you are reading. This is a necessary but not sufficient condition to win my ballot in a world where the negative reads framework or topicality in a competent fashion.
When it comes to evaluating topicality, I default to the lens of competing interpretations on the standards debate. I could be persuaded to use reasonability, though I have rarely heard a compelling justification for it, or an explanation for reasonability that wasn’t entirely arbitrary.
I believe that the distinction between potential and articulated abuse, in the context of T, is one without a difference. If your plan text deprives the negative of ground that they were entitled to by the resolution then you have been abusive, regardless of whether or not they read the position in the debate round.
What limits most is probably not what limits best. Interpretations that are faithful to the resolution probably limit best. Reading topicality, and then indicting things like field contextuality and grammar is unwise.
The topic does not oppress you. It does not deprive you of your agency. It is the foundation for a productive discussion in a competitive activity. Respect it.
OTHER PROCEDURALS
I am generally not fond of most other procedurals that the negative reads against affirmatives. As mentioned before, I look down on spec arguments. For me to even CONSIDER voting on a specification argument, the following conditions have to be met: 1) You must have asked a relevant POI. 2) You must have read an argument with a link relevant to your POI. 3) The affirmative must have linked out of the position via shifting out of their POI answer or relying on the fact that they failed to answer your POI. And the funny thing is, if this series of events occurs, then you wouldn’t need to read SPEC in the first place – an MO explanation of the aff’s abuse will be sufficient. Don’t worry about PMR “golden answers” in this case – I’m perfectly comfortable gut-checking an extremely abusive strategy.
So really, don’t read SPEC, it just pisses me off, and if you are the MG you should feel free to dismiss the argument with, as Aaron Hardy puts it, “maximum flippancy.”
I am, however, more open to procedurals based on over-specification. Affs should be wary of specifying more than they have to, especially if it links the neg out of intuitive ground. If you can justify your specification as normal means you will probably be ok, but you are better off having that debate on solvency.
I am also open to “mandate-specification,” otherwise known as vagueness. Unless explicitly part of the resolution, using a numbered, existing piece of legislation as your plan text is probably not kosher. All the core mandates of the plan should be in the text. ((By mandates I do not mean enforcement, funding etc., but the actual plan action.)
DISADVANTAGES
As mentioned earlier, I tend to evaluate disads link-first. In the real world, the probability of a bill passing is not zero or one. It is somewhere in between. The link debate would then determine whether or not the probability of an event decreases or increases. Thus, you would be wise to spend more time on the link debate than on the uniqueness debate.
That’s not saying you should do no work on uniqueness. A completely conceded uniqueness story will make it very difficult to win link turns. But once there are arguments going both directions, I’m probably going to assume that the link could go either way.
Defense is very valuable on disads, and MGs would be wise to spend more time on it. Obviously, defense alone won’t win you the debate round, but so long as you know where your offense is you should be fine.
COUNTERPLANS
As mentioned in the cliffs notes, I do not like counterplans that rely on normal means for competition. These counterplans detract focus from the question of whether or not the plan is a good idea. Consult, Delay, tiny PICS, Conditioned counterplans, Enforcement counterplans, etc. are lame strategies that I want to disregard if I am allowed to.
On the flip side, I am generally of the belief that conditionality is a good thing. I want teams to feel free to come up with advantage counterplans on the fly without necessarily being stuck to them. Most of the problems with conditionality are really caused by the counterplans themselves being lame, not the fact that they are run conditionally.
Further, I believe that theory is a reason to reject the argument, not the team, and I am near absolutist on this point. Reading your counterplan unconditionally is one of the only ways you could lose the debate on counterplan theory in front of me. So, be careful.
The only instance in which I might consider voting on theory is a nuanced conditionality shell. Even then, I would lean towards sticking the negative to their counterplan rather than rejecting the team outright. This also means that 5 minutes of theory in the PMR is probably not a winning strategy. You should probably go for something else too.
I do not need a counter-interpretation from the negative on counterplan theory. When you are reading counterplan theory, you are saying “We should have this rule.” If your opponents explain why the rule is a bad one, that is perfectly sufficient.
“THE K”
I like the K. A lot. I’m sure this will surprise many of you. But a year of judging bad econ debates has convinced me of the merits of the K. There are a few things you should keep in mind.
First, I have probably not read the literature behind your argument. I spend most of my time reading reactionary monarchist literature. You will need to explain your argument clearly and simply. If I do not understand your argument, I assume that is your fault and not mine.
Second, I am very open to impact turns on a lot of these arguments. Again, my politics lean reactionary, I’ll listen to patriarchy good, cap good, neolib good, whatever. I do try very hard to avoid letting my politics creep into my decision.
Third, you still have to be topical. Good K affs can defend the resolution and access their impacts simultaneously. I’m open to framework arguments from the affirmative that say certain impacts shouldn’t be weighed and certain arguments should be disregarded, but you still must be topical.
Fourth, I hate whining. I consider “K’s are cheating” and “The topic deprives me of my agency” to be equally asinine. If you want to win framework, you should be the team explaining why your argumentative choices make debate better broadly, rather than crying.
Fifth, I think in a world where two teams of equal skill are debating a K, the K will probably lose. My personal opinion is that the non-K team is ahead on a few key arguments. Don’t let this stop you from reading the argument – I vote on the K a lot.
REBUTTALS
I think most LOR’s are pretty terrible. Repeating your partner’s MO will result in mediocre speaker points. You should try to add value to the round, rather than giving the PMR four minutes of prep. That said, you can’t waive the LOR, so it might be time to figure out how to give it well.
I’m not really one to give the PMR “golden answers,” especially on the positions that came out new in the MG. I’m perfectly willing to evaluate your arguments. Going for something stupid in the PMR on the basis that the negative doesn’t get second lines is a bad strategy in front of me.
Impact calculus is very, very important, and few people do it. Rebuttals without impact calculus in rounds where there is plenty to be done will receive mediocre speaks. If you want better speaks than your member speaker, you have to do better than just repeating their arguments.
Call Points of Order on new arguments. I won’t allow blatantly new arguments in the absence of a point of order, but I will lean towards allowing an argument if it is close.
Do not call points of order to throw off your opponents. That will result in low speaks. Trust me, I can tell.
POIS
First, I do not believe in protected time. Second, I expect you to take questions on your advocacy texts related to clarification. Everybody in the round should understand what is going on. I probably consider not taking any questions on an advocacy text a voting issue. Further, denying clarification requests will result in low speaker points.
That said, if the other team starts using POIs to make arguments, feel free to shut them down for the remainder of your speech. In the absence of cross-x, this seems like the only fair compromise – you only ask POIs for clarification, and you take all the POIs the other team needs for clarification.
If you are doing something weird with framework, I expect you to take questions on that. If the subject matter of your arguments is complex and obscure, I expect you to take questions on that. Obfuscation = low speaks.
And finally, repeating from the cliffs notes, DO NOT have one speaker answer questions while the other is making arguments. I intensely dislike that.
SPEAKER POINTS
25-30. Below a 25 is for offensiveness, 26 is mediocre, 27 is below-average, 27.5 is average, 28 is good, 28.5 is very good, 29 is excellent, 30 is perfect. Perfection is rare. I gave out 3 30’s last year, all to the same debater. (guess who.)
I use speaker points to subjectively reward what I consider to be good debate, if that weren’t clear enough already. Smart, strategic, plan-focused debate is my favorite. Politics and Courts, even if executed perfectly, will max out at 29.
CONCLUSION
The overall point is this – leave your asinine arguments and asinine strategies at home when you are debating in front of me. I’ve seen enough bad debates to last me a lifetime. In all likelihood this is my last year in the activity. I’ll be damned if I spend it watching anything other than the best debates that y’all are capable of.
I’m going to try again to post all of my RFD’s online. Your ballot should contain a URL of some sort to check that out.