PF judge paradigms

I am more than a little taken with CP’s idea for a traveling PF judge paradigm. As he explains, it is a basic requirement for public speakers to, before opening their pie holes, ascertain the nature of the audience. One way or another we do this in LD and Policy, but given the extremely mixed nature of the PF pools, which often comprise a large number of people doing it for the first (and last) time, we don’t have a way of gauging the audience in that activity. His proposal is a what-if for a paradigm sheet of sorts that judges could bring with them to rounds for the teams to look over.

So my notion is to introduce the PF Paradigm Questionnaire. It’d be a simple sheet of maybe 10-12 questions of various ways a judge might like to judge, designed to both allow debaters to figure out a judge’s paradigm, and to prompt the judge him/herself to think about how and why they’re making their decisions. The questions can be “I prefer arguments based on 1. Sources & Evidence . . . 5 mixed . . . . 10 Independent reasoning.” It could ask about speed versus presentation, background, and all kinds of things. It could ask if the judge prefers teams to be vicious jackals or wussy teddy bears in cross-ex.
Then the judge carries their sheet around with him/her during the tournament, and shows it to the two teams before each round if they want to see it. If their beliefs should change as a result of their growing experience with rounds — “oh, I didn’t realize how fast ‘fast’ meant!” — they can alter it or get a new sheet between rounds. More…


I’m rather taken with this idea. CP does ask for thoughts on his decidedly comment-free blog, hence here. My first thought is, why doesn’t the man just write it and show it to us? Then we could use it at tournaments next season to try it out. I’d be happy to give it a go at Bump (or give it a bump at Go—whatever).

Thoughts? ;-)