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Re: speaker points -Reply

	Agreed that unilaterally imposing a wider range is impractical, 
but as a matter of fact the gradual upward creep of points was 
"unilaterally imposed" too, and dragged the community with it.  Those 
persons using most 27 and up "skewed" results when such points were not 
the universal minimum by giving speakers they heard a slight boost.  
Similarly, a slight broadening of points, e.g. an occasional [shudder] 25 
for a poor performance, would probably not bring out the knives and 
strike sheets.  Who knows, we could all get back to using 24s someday. . .

	But seriously, has anyone seriously experimented with other methods 
of giving speaker awards than points?  The software exists to use such 
factors as judge variance rather than the raw numerical scores.  Now used 
mostly for tabrooms to kill time during rounds by checking such scores, they 
have been seldom used as a criterion for speaker awards.  [Earlier attempts 
such as the old District VII quality point system, which was essentially on 
the same premise, have not found much use either].  The advantage of such 
systems is that it encourages judges to distinguish among performance levels a
bit more without the emotional baggage which restrains a wide spread of 
points.

	I could see a concern with using a 
speaker evaluation system substantially different from the current one if 
team points were a significant determinant in clearing teams, but many 
larger (and smaller) tournaments seem to be moving to clearing most or al 
teams with winning records anyway [partial elims, etc] and points are often 
just a seeding factor.  Such factors as strength of opposition [again, 
computers make such things more accessable] would be as good or better for 
discriminating among teams with similar win-loss records for seeding, and 
perhaps even for "clearing" to elims, than speaker point totals.


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Glen W. Clatterbuck
Illinois College
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Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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