Koc WUDC Debating Guide: Appendix for Judges

What am I doing here?

Go to the debate. Write down the things the debaters say. Evaluate those things as honestly as you can, based on how persuasive they were to an unbiased intelligent observer. You then allocate speaker marks and positions accordingly. For the first six of the nine preliminary rounds, you give teams their positions (not speaker marks) and feedback. For the latter three rounds, you tell the teams you saw nothing at all until after the break has been announced.

I've heard a lot about something called 'holistic judging'. What is that?
The short answer: judging any particular thing in the context of all the other things (i.e. as opposed to judging being an exercise in ticking boxes).

The long answer: judging persuasiveness holistically means that strategy, content and style are interdependent. Deploying arguments persuasively is impossible if they are not explained clearly, if their importance is not emphasised, and if the interest of the audience is not maintained to listen to them. Without decent argumentation, style is empty rhetoric, a fa