Forensics: Menick v. Wexler on MJP (again)

As always, MJP’s Greatest Nonfan, Pajamas Wexler, has responded to my explanation. It was in a comment, so I’ll repeat it here, first in its entirety.

The explanation is fine or as fine as I can make out of this hour of the day. A few thoughts anyway.

1) I think specialization is bad in general. In theory, I don't want to have 'my' debaters being advantaged anymore than be disadvantaged by having only one debater participate in MJP. I recognize given my preferences MJP may be 2-2 or 3-3 but still. I also think that given the inevitable need to sometimes have a 1-2 or 2-3 in later rounds, someone will sometimes have an advantage anyway ( I have not run a MJP tournament myself, so I don't know how common that is admittedly, but it seems it w/b a challenge as the tournament drags on.

2) more importantly I believe that more national circuitry programs - larger ones anyway-will almost always have an advantage in ranking judges. Normally I don't think much of this as an argument but I do think it is valid here. These programs will 1) know more about the judges in the pool as they actually function, not just what is in the written paradigms, 2) be able to have someone read the paradigms and, most importantly, think through strategy for the MJP. It isn't just, or even mostly a paradigm question after all, but ' do I want judge X hearing me in a bump round against those people who I we might be debating in bump rounds'.

It is similar to expecting people to intelligently be able to make decisions about their retirement or health accounts. Sure, some can, but at a certain point there is too much information to intelligently process, especially during the few days rankings are open. For any number of reasons, larger programs will make intelligent rankings, Smaller ones will need to make choices between preparing the topic, ranking the judges, or doing school work, be it studying for tests or writing then.

That is why some opt out, it just isn't a priority given limited resources. Sure, we can say that is their own decision. That is the position some take regarding people who don't choose optimal retirement programs or health ones. I simply don't agree we should rely on the ideology of choice in either case.

I offer, first, an overview. Much of what PJ is saying is an argument against MJP per se. He would prefer that it not be used at tournaments. This is not what I am arguing at the moment. What I’m saying is that, at a given tournament that does have MJP, not using it both disadvantages the nonuser and perpetuates the styles that nonusers do not like. Simply put, at a tournament where all the circuit folk rank and all the traditional folk don’t, that tournament, regardless of the makeup of the pool and the field and the percentage of people in either camp, de facto becomes circuit-oriented. One could, perhaps, use this as an argument against MJP in general, but I think it’s a stronger argument in favor of traditionals getting on board with it. Until tournaments are run with pretty much total MJP buy-in, any discussion of its effects remain theoretical. If a tournament that was 50/50 had full buy-in, what would that look like? I suggest that the answer would be favorable to multiple styles, but as I say, I’m just theorizing. I do have experience of one tournament where everyone ranked, by the way, but that was NDCA, which by definition would be mostly circuit types, or at the very least people well aware of the circuit. Therefore we can’t draw conclusions from that one. At every other tournament I’ve done, I have seen what I’ve been saying, the tendency toward favoring the circuit. Which is why I want everyone else to dive in. Let’s see what happens.

As for specifics, point one:

First, No debater is disadvantaged in MJP because their choice is mutual.

Second, assuming that debaters don’t specialize is a false assumption: all debaters favor a certain style that they develop over time, and it’s a realistic measure of a debater's style to put that style on a continuum ranging from traditional to circuit. In other words, specialization is built in to the humanity of the thing. We each specialize in our own style. The debater who doesn’t tend a certain way is nonexistent.

Third, I wonder how much of a difference there is in a 1-2 ranking, since the checks I’ve made on it demonstrate, without enough data for true statistical analysis and standing therefore merely as anecdotal data, that the bottom side of a 1-2 is every bit as likely to win as the top. More to the point, these 1-2s are very rare. At NDCA, where everyone ranked, I estimate they were 5% of the entire tournament roster of rounds, if that. When we say mutual, we mean mutual. Non-mutuals are one-offs that, as PJ suggests, occur in the later rounds if at all, and we try to push them into rounds out of contention for eliminations. Granted, for the people in those rounds, in contention or not, they’re real rounds, but one must face the fact that tournaments are designed for the sake of competition.

Point two:

First, advantage to the big schools. Well, that’s true, MJP or not, in my opinion. Or it’s not true, given my own experience with the Panivore. In any case, non-unique.

Second, nevertheless, even granting the obvious that anyone in the circuit will tend to know the circuit judges better through experience, it misses the point that at many if not most tournaments, e.g. the northeast college tournaments like Yale and Princeton, and even most of the high schools, the pool of judges has plenty of traditional judges who are not on the circuit much. That’s why my system of coaches setting definitions for the judges entered is either circuit, traditional or newcomer. These traditional judges, who are not being ranked, get leftover rounds by default. This means that schools who prefer traditional styles are not only being disadvantaged in rounds, but their judges are sitting around drinking a lot of coffee until the later rounds when we can finally find slots for them. This starts to equate traditional judges with bad judges, and I certainly don’t buy that, because I would call myself a traditional judge, and I may be good or I may be bad, but my quality is not predicated on my preference for traditional LD.

Third, as I say, it’s not too much information, because it’s three categories, circuit, traditional and newcomer. A tournament with, say, 30 or 40 judges? Not hard to sort out, considering that you inevitably do know some already. More to the point, however, CP is promising to work it so that the students themselves can do the ranking, with special accounts that can do only that. In other words, it becomes part of the students’ responsibilities, not the coaches’. If you put it that way, seriously, how many students won’t want to rank? They may not know all the judges, especially when starting out, but they’ll know themselves, and they’ll want what they want vis-à-vis style.

My bottom line is that, until we see how a fully committed system of MJP works, we can’t know its effects. Add to that the alternatives: community rankings (which only work in a small community), no rankings (which means that a judge who isn’t trained is as likely to judge a bubble round as the Coach of the Year), or tab room ranking. I was raised on the latter at invitationals and the random approach at local MHLs. We tried community and found that they were, inevitably, no different from tab rankings; at least they had more buy in than MJP. As for MJP, in my experience, debaters who have used it have inevitably reported back that at whatever tournament, big or small, where it’s been in effect, they had what they considered excellent judging. I’m not saying that the students should make decisions about how the activity should be defined, since that is the job of the teachers, but their experiences of tournaments must indeed inform the teachers doing their job.

Anyhow, I love that PJ responds, because I think his opinions are valid and need airing. Of course, I also think that he’s wrong, but since we’re both in the debate business, I’m sure neither he nor I is bothered by the belief of our individual positions being the correct ones, and the other person’s opinions being not so correct. In other words, he thinks I’m the one who is wrong. We air our thoughts in public so that everyone else can decide on an individual basis. Fun stuff.
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