Four things it will not do, checked mechanically on every single one
- No scores. No feedback score, no average, no rank — and no number at all, anywhere, which kills counts and round numbers in the same stroke.
- Nothing that says which debate. No round, no stage, no motion, no argument, no country. Any word that only a motion could have supplied is blocked outright.
- Nothing from the teams. No team, school or person named. Nothing attributed — never “a team felt” or “your chair said”, because on a panel of three that names them.
- No quoting. Not one seven-word run is shared with any original comment, so a distinctive phrase cannot give its author away.
A summary that breaks any of those is rejected and rewritten before it can be published, and the checks run again at publish time. Generic craft language stays — “the opening half”, “the comparative”, “the bench” — because banning it would strip out the part worth reading.
A judge with a middling amount written about them. Real name, because it is mine.
Mahor Nagda
consolidated · anonymous · no scoresThe read
You come across as a decision-maker people broadly trust: the read on the debate was described as accurate and the call as fair, and the way you ran deliberation drew warm praise for giving everyone real time and space. The consistent thread of criticism is not the result but the explanation of it. More than one person noted that the closest clash was under-analysed in the oral, and that bench comparison was left out or done thinly, with the reasoning only becoming clear in individual feedback afterwards. Alongside that, one person felt you credited a contribution more generously than its mechanism and evidence warranted, and one found you slightly severe on teams overall.
What came through strongly
- Your read on the debate landed as accurate and your call as fair, which is the hardest part of the job to get right.
- You run a generous, inclusive deliberation, giving everyone on the panel real time to speak.
- Your individual feedback is strong enough that it clarified reasoning people had not fully picked up from the oral.
What to work on
- Identify the closest clash before you start speaking and make that comparative the spine of the oral, rather than leaving it to be resolved in individual feedback.
- Build the bench comparison into your standard oral structure so no team is left without an explicit account of where they sat and why.
- Before crediting a contribution, check aloud in deliberation whether it actually carried a mechanism and evidence, or whether it was asserted.
- Sense-check the severity of your assessment against how much a team genuinely failed to do, since one person read you as a touch punitive.
What people wrote about
Fifteen comments, and they genuinely disagreed with each other. Note how the split is reported as a split rather than averaged into mush.
A judge with a lot written about them
consolidated · anonymous · no scoresThe read
You come across as a judge with real analytical range — people consistently say you catch the nuances in a round, understand what each team is doing, and can defend your call and give useful individual feedback afterwards. The clearest and most repeated thing to work on is how the call gets explained: the oral was often described as hard to follow, rushed at the end, or heavy on abstract framing devices rather than the concrete comparative. Several people wanted to know why one contribution beat another and did not get that. Views split sharply on deliberation: some found it a pleasure and well managed across a split, while others found you dominated early, compressed later comparisons, or left disagreements unresolved.
What came through strongly
- You pick up nuance and different directions of thinking in messy rounds, and people credit you with a strong grasp of what every team contributed.
- You defend your call well under pressure and give genuinely useful personal feedback to individual speakers.
- At your best your justifications are concise and accurate, and people found the oral educative on close calls.
- You managed a panel with differing initial calls without the room becoming adversarial.
What to work on
- Make the decisive comparison explicit in the oral — say plainly why responding to a contribution means a team loses to another, rather than leaving the step implied.
- Lean less on abstract framing like logical priority to resolve close splits, and more on the specific material the teams actually put up.
- Budget deliberation so the last comparisons get the same care as the first — talk less in the opening stretch and leave room to close out genuine disagreements before calling it.
- Slow your delivery and simplify the phrasing so people are not asking for clarifications, and drop the recap of everyone's initial calls from the oral.
What people wrote about
Two comments. It says so and stops, rather than inflating them into a paragraph of pattern-finding.
A judge with very little written about them
consolidated · anonymous · no scoresThe read
Very little was written about you, so there's not much to consolidate. What came in was positive: someone noted you arrived at a different call initially but explained your reasoning persuasively and ran things efficiently, and there was a clear endorsement of you as a strong judge.
What came through strongly
- You justify your decision convincingly even when it isn't the call others expected, and you do it without wasting time.
What to work on
- With so little written about you, seek out direct conversations after debates so you get more to work with next time.
What people wrote about
What happens next
- You read a few of these and tell me what to change — the tone, the length, the balance between praise and criticism, or any rule you want tightened.
- The wording rules live in one editable file, so a change is one line and a rebuild, not a rewrite.
- Judges get a link and paste their own private URL. Nobody else's page is reachable from theirs.