Speech Judge

Updated 4/20/19

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Don't mess up.

Email: djzhaistore@gmail.com

Was an average pf/policy k debater, non policy scroll to bottom

2023-24 season note: assume little to no topic knowledge especially regarding the meta/common args. Might change as season goes on. Have mercy… I spend very little time thinking about debate now…

Update: I think this topic is making me into a policy hack… I think k on this topic is not very strategic unless you cook up something insane… sry

You can probably ignore the stuff below, just keeping it for potential reference. I shouldn’t need to do mental gymnastics to judge rounds well. Good luck have fun ride the wave!

TLDR: do what you do, make my life judging easy and I will boost speaks/affect the ballot. I like to see good preround strategy and understanding of what arguments will win you the round. Flexibility is a double-edged sword, and I like to see debaters who fully commit to their strongest arguments. Open to some level of postrounding, but is intended to be productive for growth. I won't pretend to be a blank slate, but I doubt any reservations I strongly hold will affect my ballot. I am not good at sugarcoating rfds and I’m not a fan of inflation, sorry…

Everything below is how I perceive policy debate, take the implications for your round in particular with a grain of salt, I have a bad habit of being very fluid in my judging and it's hard to extrapolate judging intuition I’ve developed to concrete overarching views. I tend to shy away from debate jargon as much as possible, I think policy has evolved lots of metas that I hold my nose voting on. I think there's more interesting ways to debate beyond prewritten "fairness, clash, education" blocks. I think about interesting arguments beyond a single round etc. I dislike the trend of judges going out of their way to be neutral/the perfect judge, a lot of what I find annoying in debate now seems to have evolved from this trend.

Obligatory evidence ethics blip here. I may judgekick args dependent on egregiously read cards. It shouldn't be a burden of the other team to call out bad ev, but I will reward teams that do so. It really shouldn't be my responsibility either, if you haven't read your own cards beyond highlights, it's on you.

CPs:

I tend to think condo good. the winning aff on condo sufficiently points out to how neg limits the ability of aff to have any offense anywhere. This is a pretty high threshold to meet and usually aff teams seem to put out a 2ac that just responds anyways? Perms test competition, group redundant ones, it makes my life easier. I think the role of aff teams is distinct from neg teams, probably lean towards judge kicking 90% of the time. 1NC cardless cps annoy me.

K/fw:

I find the idea of judging k rounds less and less appealing now… I think aff and neg should actually be differentiable in some way and not just speech orders…

Link debate goes on top of K and if I don't see links in the 2ar/2nr something has probably gone quite wrong. Framework tends to be more boring to judge than link debate. “Make the K do the work, not fw.” The K should directly indict and answer questions typically debated on fw. Role of judge and role of ballot mostly go over my head tbh… I think I rarely hear one that does not come off as redundant/self serving because debate is inherently competitive…

I get irritated by affs that are wishy washy with the ballot. "Debate space" "model" args have gotten quite meta but I constantly get the feeling that debaters would rather debate about that than debate in said debate space. Ok! you want me to vote for you so you can debate this way? debate it then…

I don't judge performance affs that much, that said, I have no implicit reasons against voting for one. I don’t know if I would say the ones I’ve judged were particularly good, so impress me!

Don't give me a subpar 1000wpm philosophy lecture posing to be relevant to the ballot please. Keep it classy

T/theory:

My views towards T and theory are probably idealistic but bite me ig.

Run T like a DA, I like good T debate as much as the next guy. TVAs are fun, call out lazy K affs. That said when it comes to definition/contextual comparison please put in legwork to contextualize why I should take a certain card at face value. I personally spend too much time thinking about Wittgenstein/philosophy of language so I have strong notions on T. If you plan on reading theory ideally I should be able to just write my rfd then and there; I like efficient responses to trivial theory (E.g. running disclosure against a generic aff). I haven't yet dropped anyone on condo or disclosure absent it being completely dropped so if that's your "strats" maybe strike me. Sorry if I miss blippy theory args in later speeches…

Misc:

Jargon is the bane of persuasive debate. I’m not caught up on a lot of jargon and it is my belief that it shouldn’t matter. make the purpose of your argument clear, and anything else should be irrelevant. More and more I get the feeling that policy debaters are some of the least persuasive people…

I think spreading to some extent has become a necessary evil to lots of debaters. prewritten blocks/theory/T etc a lot of the time will feel like it misses the spirit of whatever type of argument. it seems to me a crutch to avoid adaptation to any round, although the better teams I’ve judged seem to have a good grasp on both. TLDR technical debate should not be treated as a crutch for understanding how to be persuasive. It is substantially easier to debate something that is true/you feel is true. I will usually not intervene on the ballot for truth level claims, but I will think about them.

Go fast if you must, but I may lose things time to time especially if things get tacked on during speeches out of order. Emphasize card transitions and which off well and I will be happy. Quality>Quantity of args. I like to feel like my flowing is productive, I love seeing debaters make strategic decisions early and decisively.

Not timing anything unless it’s an issue and any other questions you can just ask me. CX is very flexible, partners feel free to chime in. do whatever during your prep time and if everyone is ok with it, I have no issues.

I’m not a super finicky person about particulars like sending docs on time, missing x seconds of prep, etc. I find it hard to believe that teams doing this gain real advantages, and I’ve yet to judge a round where stealing time or trying to penny pinch small advantages really changes the debate in a substantial way. that said call out ridiculous violations and I’ll be all ears.

3 cards or less sent in body are fine unless super long, probably don't need a marked copy for <2 cards. I take evidence ethics seriously, arguments that depend on questionably cut cards will probably end up dropped unless you can justify it post round. I will rely on my potential circumstantial knowledge of current events if I hear something that sounds blatantly outdated and intervene if it is critical enough. Regarding kritikal args/theory/philosophy based arguments I am leaning more and more towards just evaluating arguments/logical flow. I see too many miscut cards and misunderstood theory so just putting it out there that my threshold for what counts as an adequate response has been getting lower and lower.

I'm not a speaks goblin, but I think they are arbitrary. >29 and I probably really liked how you debated in round. Anything less is probably just a placeholder/vaguely relevant to presentation/execution outside of the ballot. Differences of 0.1 are arbitrary and mostly bc I can’t input ties. 0.5 probably matters more. Usually winning team will also have higher speaks unless there was a tragic mistake somewhere.

Remember to have fun and be nice

OTHER EVENTS:

Assume no topic knowledge, well informed overall so probably will have some biases, very few relevant hard stances so persuade me otherwise. If something sounds contradictory to what I know about current affairs, I will probably go snoop in the cards or discard relevant analysis unless I am shown otherwise.

Will probably disclose out of habit unless tab tells me not to.

Make it clear what you think wins you the round and it’s probably an easy ballot, tech is for ceremony but understand that winning an argument technically may have 0 relevance to my ballot if there isn't legwork to explode it./missed point. some stuff in Misc: may apply.

LD:

I have no idea what order and times LD speeches go, feel free to remind me where you're at, especially if there's a timeskew/related voter floating around. Simplify jargon for me, if it doesn't make sense to me I won't vote on it. LD now gives me the impression of partnerless policy with weird speech times, theory isn't run as much in policy so make it simpler for me to understand. I also don’t judge theory much in Policy and also usually never vote on it so for your sake please make my life easy and convince me to vote on it…

PF:

I used to be a pf debater. Treat it half as a speech focused event. Presentation should matter, convince me of something. In the spirit of the event, I value technical aspects of debate much less than being consistent, credible, and reasonable. Be a little creative with world-building and rhetoric and keep it traditional. Make my ballot easy and I will be happy. If you run disclosure I will probably drop you and your speaks. I know prog when I see prog. Condense for me, FF is 2 minutes, wrap everything up. Easiest way to condense is to not bring along baggage.

I probably cannot judge PF the same way a parent/layperson would, but I think that is the core of what judging in PF should look like, do not take me as some “technical judge” that you can progwalk on or have a “tech round.” I'm personally calloused to presentation/rhetoric, but I will try my best.

Card/evidence sharing in PF is a nightmare, I don't care to look at cards unless someone points it out in specific. If a card is written in bad faith enough I may just kick it straight up or drop the violating team. I think you can get by a lot with general topic knowledge/analytics>delusions about current events or outdated cards.

Skip the "order is our case their case weighing" (and variations) roadmaps.