Judging Guidelines II

Here is a copy of a set of judging guidelines that I drew up based on experience:

Judge in the following order:

1. Role fulfilment: were there any reasonably significant screw ups? (think of why we have roles (to make the debate better and fairer), a significant screw up is where the lack of role fulfilment impacted negatively on the debate.)
2. Quality of argument. (e.g. Analysis)
3. Content (e.g. Examples)
4. Strategy and teamwork
5. Style

The most important bit of the order is that a person who fails to fulfil their role really should be penalised. There is no automatic fourth, just things that take a speaker much, much closer to it.

Mark	Description
90> Phenomenal	A combination of Jesus, Churchill and Henry V. If they had just said white was black, you would have believed them. Unlikely.
80-90 Very good	A very good speech. Almost no flaws. You probably enjoyed listening to it and/or learned something from it. This is a break round speech.
75-80 High Average	Generally a good speech. Few flaws. This is where analysis etc really come in.
75	An average speech at a normal IV.
70-75 Low Average	Not a bad speech. 5 minutes or more, generally structured, generally had teamwork, no major flaws. You were just left wanting a bit more from the speech.
60-70 Not bad	The speaker probably spoke for over 4 minutes but had one or more of the following flaws: no analysis, really bad analysis, no structure, possibly slight internal contradictions, but not enough to be massively bad, no examples/knowledge.
50-60 Poor Speech	You probably fell asleep. Possibly more than once. If you didn’t fall asleep it was because you were writing humorous notes to your co-judges. They probably spoke for less than 4 minutes AND stabbed, repeated their partner verbatim, just didn’t make sense etc etc
<50 Actively bad	They did any, or all, of the following: vomited, cried, left the room saying ‘I just can’t do this’, made rape jokes in a debate about the EU, spoke in a language other than English, would be part of a great debating story if only anyone else had seen it. Bluntly, these marks are rare. A person is required to be actively bad. This mark usually requires justification to the CA or is simply banned outright.

General

· Each speaker must bring in new information (except summary)

· Summary speakers should not be penalised for not summarising thematically

· Analysis motions exist as a statement, and teams have to argue whether the statement is either true or not.

· To argue whether a statement is true the proposition should provide criteria for which the motion should be judged on. The opposition need to argue that those criteria are either irrelevant or not strong enough.