Hi everyone! I’m not sure if this is a thing anymore, but I thought I’d organize a tournament -- I think they’re really fun, competitive ways to grow as a debater! I know tournaments often tend to die out, but I’ll do my best to prevent that, I guess. Can’t do much else but try.
Topic restrictions
This will be an assigned topics tournament. In other words, you won’t choose the topics. Instead, I’ll provide three topics per round, and you and your opponent will have 24 hours after each topic release to pick one of the three, and your sides (please debate the exact wording that I provide!). If you don’t, I’ll assign you a topic and sides (Pro/Con) from the three topics I’ve provided. Either way, you’ll start the debate another 24 hours after you’ve decided on or I’ve assigned you your topic and sides. I’ll do my best to make the topics evenly-balanced, by using topics that have actually been used in debate tournaments in a range of formats (PF, LD, and Parli) around the world, and checking to see if they empirically have roughly equal win probability for Pro and Con.
Why this restriction? A good measure of debating ability is how you’re able to debate on a randomly chosen set of roughly-even topics on a wide range of fields. It does reduce the control you have over picking a topic, but in my view, it’s a better measure of your ability to debate as a whole. Besides, you’ve got lots of opportunities on this website to debate the topics you choose, so I reckon opting into this competition is a fun way of challenging yourself to debate a broader range of topics.
Debate rules
This competition has some rules about the structure of debates to save time:
- The maximum character limit is 10,000 characters. Feel free to set an even lower one if you prefer that and agree to it, but don’t set a higher one.
- Have a maximum of three rounds per debate (once more, to save time and allow the tournament to progress).
- Have a maximum of 72 hours per round.
- The voting period should be 1 week. In exchange, I’ll do my absolute best to vote on every debate in the competition, unless I have some emergency, and I’ll also actively solicit votes for you.
In total, each round is given ~25 days to complete before the next round begins. Hence, this tournament is meant to last a total of ~3 months.
Other than that, feel free to set your own rules, alongside your competitor.
Tournament structure
I intend for this to be a single-elimination tournament with space for eight people (the first eight people to sign up, on this thread).
I’ll create the tournament bracket.
The first round will be seeded by current Elo on DebateArt.com -- so the eight people will be ranked from #1 to #8 in descending order of Elo, and #1 will be paired against #8, #2 against #7, and so on.
The second round will have the winner of #1 vs. #8 face the winner of #4 vs. #5, and the winner of #2 vs. #7 face the winner of #3 vs. #6.
Naturally, the third round will be the final. The winner of the third round wins the competition. I’ll make adjustments to the structure in case anyone drops out, or doesn’t finish a debate in time -- it may require revamping the whole structure midway through the competition.
(In case any of the debate’s results is a tie, I’ll do my best to get a neutral observer to vote in 24 hours, either from within DART or an experienced IRL judge. If not, my vote will be the decisive one. But to be honest, I’m open to recommendations on this issue -- I haven’t thought it through, and I’ve assigned myself as the decider somewhat arbitrarily; I don’t mean to claim I’m a better judge than anyone else who votes.)
Sign-ups
Do sign-up here!
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