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Council of Tournament Directors, full message

At the 2009 Wake Developmental Conference, the Best Practices Working Group – a robust group whose membership included Ross Smith -- produced a list of 7 recommendations, the first of which was:

“A council of tournament directors should be convened to review tournament practice and publish a ‘best tournament practices’ document.”

There was a strong feeling that there needed to be a forum to discuss many issues of tournament procedure and a document in which consensus opinions could be recorded. This document, it was felt, would greatly assist tournament directors in determining how their tournaments would be run.

I will take the initial step of convening the Council of Tournament Directors this January in between the two halves of the Cal swing. Most broadly, our agenda will include: (a) defining a governance structure for the Council – officers, meeting dates voting procedures, etc. (b) identifying issues for the Council to include in the Best Practices document, and (c) if deemed appropriate, appoint working groups to produce sections of the Best Practices Document.

The original 7 recommendations included general goals, as well as specific recommendations about a 100 point ballot, ordinal ranking, judging commitments. Issues I hope to codify include:

Rules, including questions of mavericks, hybrids, bracket breaking, etc.

Pairing, including which rounds should be high-high, how to count a bye in terms of opponent wins, etc.

Judge Placement, including the number of categories, what criteria should be used to determine a “good” judge, how to avoid judge compression (the same judges hearing all the good debates), how to deal with high-commitment judges that don’t fit into any rounds, etc.

Schedule, including the appropriate number of preliminary rounds, time to allot for each, the 2:45 rule, etc.

As soon as a meeting place is finalized I will publish it; as soon as a formal agenda is finalized I’ll publish that as well. I welcome all input on how to convene the Council and how to increase participation. My intention is that some means of remote participation will be available (webcast or something). I will also try to draft some working documents for circulation to get the ball rolling. Please plan on attending if you can, and share any ideas you have about maximizing the effectiveness of the initial meeting.
The full proceedings of the Wake conference are soon to be published, but I will include the appendix of the Best Practices Working Group to give you an idea of the range of issues the Council might address:

APPENDIX: ORIGINAL AGENDA

The following is the informal range of topics the Best Practices Working Group considered as a possible agenda. It is presented here so that future bodies, such as the Council of Tournament Directors, have a documented list of possible issues that they might consider.

Proposed Agenda:
Tournament Scheduling and Entry Considerations
Available divisions: Is a shortage of novice or JV divisions a problem? If so, what can be done to encourage these divisions and to encourage entries in them?
District tournaments: What, if any, problems do we presently have with numbers of regional/district-level tournaments? What could be done to encourage greater participation in such tournaments?
Qualification systems: Should the NDT reconsider the first or second round at-large qualification system?
Tournament Atmosphere/Structure (Big Picture): How can we best make a debate tournament a livable experience? How many prelim rounds/tournament days are optimal for the invitational tournament? Eight? Seven? Six?
Tournament Communication: How should tournaments communicate to participants procedures etc.
Academic accountability: Are changes necessary in competitive practices relating to academic eligibility? Are changes necessary in applicable rules controlling the number of semesters of tournament eligibility?
Allowing hybrid/maverick debaters: Do invitational tournaments allow this practice? Is there a reason to make a recommendation to invitational tournaments concerning this practice?
Judging obligations: Are changes in judging obligation systems necessary to improve the availability/quality of judging at tournaments?
What is the state of web-based tournament entry systems? Are changes necessary? What does the future hold?
Tab Room Procedures
What is the future for tournament tabulation software? What changes are on the horizon? CAT, STA, TRPC
Jon Bruschke has an important projector-based demonstration here.
Ballot retrieval: Are there superior ways to distribute ballots and retrieve results? Given the digital transition, what is the future?
How should rounds be paired?
Should preliminary rounds be random or seeded? If seeding is the answer, how should seeding be determined?
What power-matching systems should be used?
High-high versus high-low
How should brackets be evened?
Pulling up the weakest opposition records: where should pullups be placed in the new bracket?
Pulling up middle to middle
Bringing leftovers down
Judge assignment systems
Philosophy of Judge Assignment: Brent Brossmann has prepared some comments for this section.
Assignment by ordinal judge rankings: The NDT experience.
Gary Larson, John Fritch, and Rich Edwards will discuss the experience at the 2009 NDT and the plans for the future, with an invitation for feedback.
Mutual preference: How many categories? What category sizes?
Mike Hall and Kris Willis have been working on a research project comparing judging experiences in prior decades to current practices; I presume that discussion would best go at this point in the agenda.
Director’s notion of judge quality: Evaluating past practices (and often current high school practice)
Random: Can a case be made for a return to this practice? Could it be done in some rounds, if not all?
Is speaker point inflation a problem? If so, what is the solution?
Higher point ballot
Alternatives
Opposition Win
Combined number: Opposition win & high/low speaker points
Deviation from judge mean points
Ranks
Tournament Rules & Procedures
Post-round comments: What feedback system(s) would best provide sound forensic education? Does our community have a problem with civility? Would recommendations in this area be useful? Do we need a community norm concerning the amount of time allocated to post-round discussion.
What should be the rule for online access during a round of competition? Is there a way to allow online access without facilitating delivery of briefs from out-of-round researchers/coaches? Is this even desirable? Are community norms a strong enough corrective against abusive practices?
What should be the rule/norm for judge conflict? Are there issues that should be discussed here, or are present norms working sufficiently well? Should competitors be allowed to register a web-based conflict with a judge, or should such a report always come from the judge? For judges who might be unsure of the community norm, should the norm be made specific?
Debate Program Management
The digital transition: What are the problems (transporting tubs, environmental implications of paper use, copying costs, in-round management of briefs)? What are the available solutions?
Recruitment: Is there a need to discuss recruiting practices?
Evidence collection: Does our community need a standard for source credibility/qualification/conflict of interest or is this properly an in-round subject for argument?