Ramshutu

Judging Paradigm:

I make it my goal to vote on 100% of debates.

Conduct: repeated petulance, name-calling, dishonesty, or forfeits will garner a deduction.

S&G: Penalization for S&G bad enough that it impedes my understanding of your argument - minor typos are okay, but noticeable errors that prevent the argument scanning will garner deduction.

Sources: I judge sources based on how they improve the warrant for core claims. For me to award points, your sources must firmly support a key claim that is not separately warranted. Conversely you will lose source points if you don’t check your sources and they end up harming your warrant. Backing up key issues of your argument is a skill - and I view sources - and their 2 points - as more than simply selecting news articles over blog posts. One perfect source can be so impressive and well used it can win or lose this category.

Arguments: Merit and warrant win over technicalities and NSDA approved terminology. This means I am more interested in whether your argument is better, rather than whether you’ve formatted, structured or replies in the right way using formal language.

I am TR to a point - in that while I will not make an argument if you or your opponent doesn’t make it - I will also not give your position warrant that you do not give it yourself. This means if an argument is bad but unaddressed, I will still treat it as bad. Saying that, pure TR will award the win to the last person to post a round, thus I’ll use general rules of intuition, logic and knowledge but will not use any preconceptions on the debate resolution or the arguments you use.

If an argument is obviously bad, it will be treated as such - and bad arguments will only win if your opponent is worse.

My rulings are normally made on point by point wins and losses - then weighting based on argument strength. I give the benefit of the doubt in favour of the side I am interpreting: eg I will assess a dropped argument as dropped only if it is clearly not covered - if other arguments or rebuttals overlap I will not consider the argument dropped as I can’t weigh based on my interpreted intent.