Thursday, May 19, 2016

In which we continue breaking down the tournament director's toolkit

The toolkit has two versions of e-ballot instructions. One is a generic pdf, the other is a doc file, if people want to include their own wifi information. As the VCA knows, I’m a perfectly strong proponent of e-balloting, but I tend to see the flaws in the system. I know those flaws will go away, but they haven’t yet. Lots of high schools don’t have the infrastructure to handle a tournament, with hundreds of people not only logged in but streaming music and videos and all sorts of things like that. Wifi will just get better over time, and system admins will stop making general use more difficult than cracking the Enigma encryptions, and we’ll be there, but we’re not there yet. At colleges, where my reluctance is more noticeable, we’re closer, but we still need an army of enforcers to get people to do simple things like starting rounds when the rounds actually start, and not sitting around waiting an hour when a judge doesn’t show up and stuff like that. Yes, e-ballots work, but not without enforcers. Give me that enforcing army, and I’m on it like bedbugs on an EconoLodge mattress.

Thanks to the non-school groups who have laid down the gauntlet of endless shenanigans, plus the Right to Debate independents who show up all alone just begging to be taken away in a gurney so their parents can sue the crap out of you, tournament directors need to control who gets into their tournaments and who doesn’t. Thank God the NSDA has issued membership guidelines that can be applied to this. Anyhow, there is a document in the toolkit on managing entries, which recommends a waitlist at almost every tournament, and explains how best to run it. In addition to blocking bad actors, a director needs balanced divisions. If 60% of the teams in a division are all from one school, that’s not a tournament, that’s an intramural scrimmage that they could have stayed home and done for free. All of that good stuff is in there, to make sure that it all ends up as a good event for the paying customers.


One thing I haven’t written up, but which I’ll be discussing in my presentation, is the use of limited judge obligations, which I (almost) categorically oppose in high school tournaments. Limited judge obligations boils down to fewer judges. If 100 judges show up at your tournament and they are fully obligated, you have 100 judges to choose from in a pairing. If 100 judges show up at your tournament and they have half obligations, you have 50 judges to choose from in a pairing. It’s as simple as that. If you want great MJP assignments, the more judges the better. If you limit the number of judges, you weaken the MJP assignments. End of story. (My parenthetical "almost" up above was in reference to tournaments that have more judges than they know what to do with; while this is rare, it does happen, and obligations can be limited.) At the same time as I believe in full obligations, I also believe in giving people a round or two off. Everyone likes a break, so it’s a good idea to give it to them. Anyhow, my guess is that this will be among the most controversial parts of my presentation, as limited obligations are becoming the fashion, and everyone who wants to play with the big kids thinks that they ought to do it. I probably can’t stop them. But everyone in the debate universe needs to know that the less judges are obligated, the worse preferences are going to get. The math is unavoidable. Even I can do it.

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