Polin,+Jacob

The following is a series of things I'd want to know about if I were in your position. If you have any other questions feel free to ask.

All things being equal I'd be more interested in seeing a "policy" debate than a K debate but really you should do what you're best at and/or are ahead on. a. There is nothing intrinsically interesting/entertaining about a debate that focuses on more traditional policy questions. What makes debate interesting is good debating. The better your debating, the more interested I'll be, the better a judge I'll be (the your points will be?). b. If you're ahead on the flow you're ahead on the flow. I once had to vote against a team because they spoke quickly. If my biases didn't kick in there ... c. I think that those classified as really K judges and those classified as not so K judges agree way more often than a lot of people think. In my experience when they don't its usually because there was a part of the debate that the debaters did a poor job of resolving, all of the judges felt the need to intervene, and just like any other time judges are intervening they do so based on their biases. Spending a lot of time trying to figure out how you think people will behave in that situation seems kind of silly to me; shouldn't you be doing something to try and win the debate instead of trying to figure out who will vote for you if you don't?

If no one tells me otherwise I will evaluate T debates in terms of competing interpretations.

I tend to value debaters' in round explanations of arguments more than the "truth" of the argument(s) and the quality of the evidence. This isn't to say that I won't call for cards or that the conclusions I come to based on reading people's evidence don't factor into my decision but if I have to read your evidence to understand your argument or its warrants you're not going to be in the best position.

Almost every time I judge I find myself wishing that the final rebutalists had spent more time comparing the key arguments in the debate i.e. impact calc, "prefer our evidence", etc.. Its important to understand that as a judge the only tools that I have to decide almost every important question in a debate, who has better evidence on X key question, how do I compare impacts, how I such determine the most ethical course of action, etc. are the comparisons that the debaters give me. If you don't give me anything to work with how can I vote for you? Too often I'm forced to vote against the team who is clearly on the right side of the argument and probably had better evidence because the other team was the only team making warranted comparisons in important parts of the debate.

P.S.- I consider reading a strategy that I wrote in front of me to be a form of cheating. I don't mean the act of reading some cards I cut I only mean doing so in such a way that's unfair to the other team i.e. reading an argument as I cut, constructed, hilighted, and/or wrote blocks for it. I wouldn't say this if I hadn't already been put in this position as a judge in a bid round.