Some things about MJP are open to discussion. One can have various opinions for or against the idea of students identifying their favorite judges, and I personally can’t say that I’ve been able to maintain a position for longer than about a week on either side, because there’s much good information to support many theories. There are practical issues, on the other hand, that are not open to discussion. There are certain facts about the process that must be considered. I have now tabbed or observed a month’s worth of MJP tournaments, pretty much one right after the other, of varying sizes and shapes. I do not propose my opinions here: I outline why, in some situations, it does not work well, and why, in others, it does work well. It is up to the tournament director, armed with this information, to make the determination whether to use it at a specific event.
First of all, it’s a pain in the patoot, period, tournament size notwithstanding, if any judges are changed/dropped/added after the moment that the MJP starts. Every time a judge is changed, if you’ve already ranked, you’ve got to rank again. This could be simple (replacing one A+ with another A+) or complicated (replacing one A+ with a strike), requiring a total reevaluation of your rankings. With every judge change, same issue. At least one solution to this is to have rankings open for one day only, but that merely lessens the pain. Once you get to the tournament, there’s more changes. (One solution would be for people to show up with the teams and judges they initially registered, but that would mean that our community is nothing but people in control of their teams, which is simply not true. 95% of the community is people who make 5% of the changes; 5% of the community is people who make 95% of the changes. We know who you are. We hide under the table when we see you coming.) These changes go in as supplementals, a dicey process at best, handled willy-nilly usually during the first round (rendering those supplemental judges useless until the rankings are collected). At the Gem of Harlem, one team went so far as to change a judge on the third day, going into octos. No one had ranked this judge, who was, for all practical purposes, a waste of time and energy on all counts. This is not to suggest that this school had ignored MJP, of course; at least if they hadn’t understood that it was happening, one could offer support for their behavior. The bottom line to this is that, love or hate MJP, instituting it at a tournament is a bumpy process no matter how you slice it.
Secondly, there is no question that, unless you have an incredible overage of judges, all your highly preferred judges work every round. As I’ve said, you can go through and give everyone a round off, but to do that you need to have an incredible surplus, and the only place I’ve personally seen that is at Big Jake. At no other tournament I’ve been to, with the possible exception of Yale (but I don’t recall exactly the size of our pool here), could I deliberately insure everyone a round off and still run a viable tournament. The numbers simply aren’t there. Which means that you have judges who are just worn out. Just one round off can make all the difference in spirit and energy, and we’re not allowing it. We barely allow them a minute to eat their debate ziti, for Pete’s sake. This is not good.
Third, there is no question that we are creating a group of judges that don’t do anything except sit around and hope. This underclass is, as often as not, perfectly good judges who are simply not around week after week, as compared to crappy judges who deserve not to judge. Meanwhile, MJP means that, in prelims, the judge should be equally ranked by both sides. We want to give a 1-1, but if you’re stuck with a 4-4, at least it’s a 4 in both preferences. 2-3? 4-1? Na’ah, that defeats the purpose. Needless to say, this underclass of judges, if utilized, could alleviate the problem above of no rounds off, but only at the expense of tossing a lot of the goals of MJP out the window, which makes no sense, or which only allows some of the opponents to get their preferences. I guess you could look at brackets and whatnot and re-pair the rounds in a certain way to accommodate some of this, but if you want the tournament to end and start in the same decade, this is probably not a good idea.
So here’s my conclusion. MJP is workable at a tournament with a really large pool of really good judges. Anywhere else, it threatens to undermine your judging structure via a combination of overuse and underuse. Further, if you have all those good judges, you’d better come up with something to cover the lower rated ones. Put in some clear qualification process in your invitation that eliminates less well-known people or something like that. Encourage them to buy out, or allow them to judge PF instead, if you can, while fulfilling a judging obligation. Something. Anything. Otherwise those judges will simply stop coming, and you will find yourself in a serious pickle. Further, keep the ranking process to one day. Fine people $200 for any judge changes after the MJP starts (seriously—we’ve got to stop putting up with nonsense from the same people week after week who make our lives running tournaments a total hell). Give all your judges one round off (at least) in prelims on the longest day (usually Saturday). If you do all of that, at least you’ll have a sort of manageable tournament.
Is MJP a good idea or a bad idea, if you iron out all the bugs? The jury is still out on that one. But with all the bugs? No, its not a good idea, for the reasons outlined above. Even accepting the issues that only make tabbing complicated, you’re still left with issues that cause damage to judging in both the short and long term. Disregard those at your own peril!
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