Babb,+Stephen

I've been away from LD for a couple of years, returning to the fold midstream during the 2013-14 season. Suffice it to say, not much has changed.

I believe gamesmanship and any practice that reeks of nihilism should be kept to an absolute minimum. While I'm happy to vote on theory, unique positions, framework arguments and other deviations from the topic, I think leaving the topic behind and situating the debate elsewhere needs to be strongly justified. Whenever possible, I would much prefer to see a well-researched, topical debate. After being in the game so long, recycled shells and framework shenanigans have gotten old. One of LD's virtues is that the topics change, and your strats should change along with them.

Though I'm not a fan of turning LD into a pedagogically bereft game, I love to see good strategy. Don't be afraid to go fast. Don't be afraid to run plans. Don't be afraid to do anything that advances sound, warranted argumentation.

Things I //don't// like:

-Wasting my time and stealing prep time. Either take care of case-sharing before the debate or during your prep time. I don't feel like watching computers share information. -Positions that aren't topical. -Arguments designed to obviate rather than engage clash. -Unnecessary use of theoretical justifications. Theory should be used as a check, not adopted preemptively in order to justify sketchiness. -Disingenuous pre-fiat or theoretical argumentation. I'll be more lenient if you're forced into responding to something debatable, but I won't appreciate it if you initiate in-round implications of which you are almost certainly on the wrong side. -Arguing with me after the round. Feel free to ask questions, but what's done is done. -Bad K debate. Show the lit some respect. -Infinitely regressive demands (e.g. "you need to a meta-ethical justification to explain why genocide is so bad!"). Feel free to join the real world any time. -Misappropriating literature/evidence. Be very sure you're using it the right way. -Unclear delivery. Don't make me yell at you to do your job. Be clear and loud from the outset. Slow for important tags and author names. -Derivative narratives. Some stories deserve to be told, but there are a lot of very real victims out there, so be careful about playing that card. -Progressive argumentation that obscures the role of the ballot. Don't make my life difficult. Give me a clear justification for voting. -Blippiness. If you're making a lot of quick, "one-line" arguments... I won't //necessarily// ignore them, but I very well may. Arguments involve multiple steps and explanation. I feel absolutely no obligation to vote on something that's merely been asserted. That has and does set a terrible precedent.

Things you should know:

-I rarely take a long time to make a decision. Don't be shocked if I sign before the round is over or very shortly thereafter. I think all but the closest debates are won or lost in the 1AR. -I typically won't spend a lot of time reading over evidence unless you tell me to do so. There will be some exceptions, but I try to avoid doing much work for either debater in good debates. -Ignore how much I'm flowing—proceed as you would with any flow judge. I've watched a lot of these. -Sometimes I intervene, sometimes I don't. If the debaters are debating well, my hope is that they write the ballot. They will find I'm far less interventionist in these cases than the vast majority of judges. When debaters are doing things that are bad for debate, there's a good chance I'll let them know—either by voting them down or taking away speaker points. -I couldn't care less what camp you went to or who your coach is. Really. Chances are very good that I don't even know. -If you don't like debating (i.e. actually making and defending arguments), there's a decent chance I won't like judging you. Please adapt. -If you are generally OK with cheating (and the debate manifestations thereof), please do strike. -I generally default to a roughly utilitarian, policy-making approach to evaluating arguments. I think drawing strict distinctions between consequentialist and deontological thinking is unrealistic and detaches debate from how we make decisions in the real world. That's not to say I won't accept truth-testing approaches or more intricate framework stories, but they're generally not my first preference.

If you have additional questions before the debate, feel free to ask. Don't ask me if I have any paradigms or if there are any things I don't like, etc. That's what this page is for.