The New York Sophist

Tabbing the Adelphi tournament here in lovely Garden City, NY

For the first time ever in my life, I think, there are more judges than there are debaters. So in round 2 we have 7 judge panels.

Problem is that there are many same-institution conflicts all over the place. But many alums and other friends of debating have come out specifically to judge this competition. I hate sitting them to the side after having come out all this way to judge.

So I’m working to make sure that each room has a balance of conflicts. And only 3 conflicts per panel of 7. Trying, but not really having a lot of luck with it.

I wonder if anyone else has had this problem. The obvious answer is to reduce the judge pool to those who are neutral, but then we leave aside a lot of people who are supporting debate with their time and resources. I don’t mind having 5 or 7 judge panels – in fact I think it actually helps mitigate some of the biases you might find on conflict-free panels to a point – but the same institution bias is prevalent.

Suggestions?

English: Podcast or podcasting icon Français : Icône pour les podcasts ou la baladodiffusion (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Happy to announce that I’ve finally started making the podcast I’ve been thinking about for a while now. In the Bin episode 1 is available for you here.

Better downloading options to come as well as perhaps some intro music and other amenities. But for now we hope you enjoy the conversation and participate!

English: Podcast or podcasting icon Français : Icône pour les podcasts ou la baladodiffusion (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Happy to announce that I’ve finally started making the podcast I’ve been thinking about for a while now. In the Bin episode 1 is available for you here.

Better downloading options to come as well as perhaps some intro music and other amenities. But for now we hope you enjoy the conversation and participate!

I will be tabbing the King’s College Empire Debates 2013, starting tomorrow so keep refreshing this blog for updates from the tournament.

Looks like around 50 teams in the tab, but that number can change based on tomorrow morning’s registration.

one of the experiments I hope to try at the tournament is collecting a cross-section of videos of the “top room” each round. Round 1 will be a randomly selected room and after that, I will try to put the camera in the room that has the most points.

Why do this? It might shed some light on the habits of debaters who appear in most of the videos as well as their style. There are a  ton of research questions that can be answered with this data. Are there things these teams never do? Always do? Are there distinctions in style that are noticeable? the data might have to be coded in some way in order to provide for a nice qualitative analysis of it.

Otherwise it would be a nice thing to have as a digital archive of a set of practices and norms that have no future except change. Debate formats always change and are always changing. It would be nice for future debaters to see these shifts happening over time.

I will be tabbing the King’s College Empire Debates 2013, starting tomorrow so keep refreshing this blog for updates from the tournament.

Looks like around 50 teams in the tab, but that number can change based on tomorrow morning’s registration.

one of the experiments I hope to try at the tournament is collecting a cross-section of videos of the “top room” each round. Round 1 will be a randomly selected room and after that, I will try to put the camera in the room that has the most points.

Why do this? It might shed some light on the habits of debaters who appear in most of the videos as well as their style. There are a  ton of research questions that can be answered with this data. Are there things these teams never do? Always do? Are there distinctions in style that are noticeable? the data might have to be coded in some way in order to provide for a nice qualitative analysis of it.

Otherwise it would be a nice thing to have as a digital archive of a set of practices and norms that have no future except change. Debate formats always change and are always changing. It would be nice for future debaters to see these shifts happening over time.