Debate Judge Preferences

Due to technical difficulties, we will not be piloting judge preferences. We apologize for the inconvenience.

FGCCFL will pilot judge preferences in Debate (LD, PF, and CX) at All Events 6. Judge preferences allow teams to indicate which judges they consider more receptive to their arguments and style; Tabroom then does its best to assign mutually acceptable judges to each pairing. Preference sheets are optional, but we encourage teams to complete them. Below is a summary of the preference system.

Preference sheets will be available to coaches on the tournament's "Prefs" tab from 7:00 a.m. Tuesday until 9:00 p.m. Thursday of tournament week.

Coaches may give other Tabroom users (e.g., an assistant or debate captain) access to preference sheets on the school's "Access" tab.

Each entry has its own preference sheet. It is possible to clone one entry's completed sheet into other entries' sheets.

This is the preference scale:

• 1 -- Preferred (at least half the judges must get this rating)
• 2 -- Non-preferred but still acceptable
• 3 / S -- Strike (at most 10% of the judges may get this rating)

Judges with conflicts (including the school's own judges) will not appear on an entry's preference sheet and do not count in the numbers.

Judges for which no option is chosen are given a rating of 1. Entries that do not complete preference sheets are effectively giving every judge a rating of 1.

TIP: Give every judge a rating of 1 unless you can articulate a reason for not doing so based on their paradigm or past experiences. Your precious few strikes should probably be reserved for cases of systematic bias or inappropriate behavior.

If a school does not meet its Debate judge obligation OR changes their Debate judges after prefs open (which interferes with other teams' preferences), the school's entries will forfeit their preferences (effectively giving every judge a rating of 1).

Judges cannot see their ratings from any teams.

This is how Tabroom will use preferences when assigning judges:

• Tabroom will try to give every round a judge who has a 1 rating from both sides.
• If the above is impossible, Tabroom will try to assign judges with a 2 rating from both sides (so neither has a perceived advantage).
• If both of the above are impossible, Tabroom will try to assign judges with a 1 rating from one side and a 2 from the other.
• Only if all of the above are impossible will Tabroom disregard strikes and assign a judge with a 3 rating from either side.
• All else being equal, Tabroom will try to use hard-to-place judges first.
• All else being equal (including difficulty of placement), Tabroom will try to use diversity-enhancing judges.