I probably could publish the secret to life on my Facebook
page and it wouldn’t get as many likes as posting a stupid comment on the
Paginator’s page. I’ll have to remember this if I ever discover the secret to
life: since I’m going to want to keep it to myself, don’t post it on the
Paginator’s page.
We also learned this weekend that if you want people to be
able to see e-ballots, you have to publish full results for each round. I
always used to do this (and nowadays it’s even automated by tabroom), but most
other people in tab seem to prefer just publishing win/loss records. I guess
the reason is that they don’t want people figuring the brackets, but if someone
has got that much time on their hands, I say let them. Otherwise I have to go
in and republish every round, and I really don’t want to do that.
Bracket-breaking goes back to the dark ages, back when you couldn’t even know
whether you had lost or won a round because disclosure was not the norm, much
less electronic disclosure. For that matter, rounds were closed and it was
expected that judging coaches would not provide their students with the flows
of rounds they had heard. We were actually reminiscing about that at Penn.
Things have changed mightily, although in general it’s been a big change toward
openness versus a lot of little changes in a lot of different directions. Open
tab, for instance, would have been unheard of back then, and although most
people don’t look over our shoulders while we’re working, there’s no reason for
them not to if they’re really worried that we’re doing something dicey in
there.
We didn’t get too much flak this weekend, or more to the
point, not too much flak was tossed around among the contestants. There was
somebody claiming that a certain judge was biased and therefore his team should
win, the bias being that apparently the judge didn’t believe in global warming.
I had nothing to do with this discussion, but it occurs to me that the objector
should have interviewed a few LD judges if the question was whether bias matters.
After all, if there’s a subject more hot-button than guns (other than
abortion), I don’t know what it is. 100% of the LD rounds on gun control are
being judged, I would guess, by people with strong ideas about gun control. The
issue is not a bias, but ignoring that bias in the debate round. It’s not that
hard to do, although with new PF judges one does have to instruct them that
tabula rasa is the name of the game (and with some old PF judges too). It sort
of strikes me that it is the coaches’ job to figure out what biases may be
present on any topic, and to work with teams to debate in such a way that the
biases, however strong, don’t matter. It would be foolish to expect to ban all
biases, or all judges suspected of biases, because that would be, in a word,
everyone, on almost any topic, unless the topic were so boringly irrelevant
that no one can be bothered to work up a bias in the first place. Anyhow, aside
from this, there was only one rules infringement which was so clear that it was
indisputable, and we had a good coach of the infringers who understood and took
it upon himself to handle it with his team. Which is as it should be. We’re
trying to organize the rounds, not punish the debaters. Punishing the debaters
is the coaches’ job. That’s why they earn the big bucks.
The coming weekend is debate-free, then it’s on to the Land
of Lakes, the Refurbished Gem and CFL Grands, one right after the other. And
then—
The season is over, except for my trip to Orlando for NDCA
and, possibly, a trip to Texas for the NDCA’s coaches conference. No more
tabbing though. Yee-ha!
Oh, wait. I miss it already.
___
/
No comments:
Post a Comment