Rules for 2010 Online Tournament

[JPS]

Registration: Each debater wishing to compete must register by posting on the 2010 Registration thread before July 5th, 2010.

Commitment: Each debater registering is committing to compete in 4 rounds, which are flexibly scheduled between July 5th and Sept. 15th. (Flexible scheduling means that debaters matched against one another will be able to negotiate specifically when the round occurs, provided that (1) once begun, the round proceeds within the time limits set by these rules for posting speeches and (2) the round must be completed before Sept. 15th. Debaters may schedule multiple rounds they are participating in to occur simultaneously.

Teams: 1-person teams. Debaters must write their own speeches.

Evidence: Quoted evidence is not allowed. Posting of or reference to linked material is not allowed. Debaters must rely on their own analysis to give weight to arguments. Judges should ignore and/or give no weight to arguments that attempt to use quoted evidence or appeal to authority as the basis for the claim. Debaters may, when appropriate to give due credit, refer to individuals or groups that inspired or influenced their individual thinking with regard to a particular issue, but the relative qualifications, expertise, or other qualities of such sources should be considered completely irrelevant in deciding the outcome of the round.

Time Limits: In an online format, time limits are modeled by word count. Speeches cannot contain more than the word count limit for that speech. Speeches that are found to exceed the word count limit may be edited or the debater assigned a forfeit.

Speeches: Rounds will proceed as follows:
-- 1st Aff: 1400 words.
-- CX of Aff: Maximum of 3 questions containing no more than 30 words each.
-- Aff response to CX: No more than 100 words in response to each question asked.
-- 1st Neg: 1600 words
-- CX of Neg: Maximum of 3 questions containing no more than 30 words each.
-- Neg response to CX: No more than 100 words in response to each question asked.
-- 2nd Aff: 1400 words.
-- 2nd Neg: 1800 words
-- 3rd Aff: 600 words

Each speech must be posted no later than 24 hours after the posting of the previous speech.

Judging: Judges should post a decision no later than 48 hours after the posting of the last speech. Judges will be provided by the tournament -- volunteers for judges are not required. Judges will include persons with previous debate experience as well as those with none.

Awards: If the tournament is sufficiently large so as to justify it, a prize will be given to the winner.

Cheating: Debaters found to be plagiarizing, having others write speeches for them, or otherwise cheating will be expelled from the tournament and publicly humiliated for having cheated in a online tournament run for fun.

[carrollpadwon]

I could definitely be up for this. One issue though. I think the rules should be clarified to reflect a less stringent stance on quoted evidence. Before everyone freaks out, all that I mean is the portion which suggests judges should totally disregard appeals to the quality of evidence. If we're having a debate about the Middle East, and I appeal to military experts to problematize an argument which requires a nuanced distinction which compares different experts opinions we shouldn't request of judges that they totally disregard this kind of comparison. It's good that these debates not devolve into card comparisons about 12 minutes ago versus 15 minutes, but instructing judges to disregard evidence comparison seems just a bit restrictive. Plus, this is already built to make it impossible for these to take on the qualities the language is trying to prevent in the first place. Just my two cents.

[JPS]

If we're having a debate about the Middle East, and I appeal to military experts to problematize an argument which requires a nuanced distinction which compares different experts opinions we shouldn't request of judges that they totally disregard this kind of comparison.

Yes. We should. Debaters in this form of debate should develop their own ability to reason and articulate rather than allowing a selected coterie of "experts" do all the work for them. This is the whole reason quoted evidence isn't allowed. Once it is in, the "experts" take over and the debaters' own reasoning is disparaged as inadequate by comparison and ultimately excluded.

If you want a battle of the experts (or appeals to consensus, which often appears on its surface to be appeals to "experts"), there is already a very large and well-established form of debate that exists that features it.

[carrollpadwon]

I tried to be very clear about this before, but I'm not calling for the use of evidence. I'm suggesting that the rules shouldn't instruct judges to disregard the kinds of "evidence comparison" that we already essentially do in parli.

[nmatthews]

10 char ftw