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Comment by lupire | Hacker News Reader

I'm sympathetic to the concerns, but the article rambles on in a way that doesn't make me trust the author as guide to good debating.

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She did Parlimentary (Parli), which is an incredibly abridged format in which you only learn the topic of debate 20 minutes before the round, and it changes every round. It's in literally no way comparable to Policy, where you are debating the same thing all year, and put in literally tens or hundreds of hours of preparation.

She's talking about a format she has no clue about, because it's just a right-wing rage-bait article. There have been a bunch since NDT finals, and everyone who knows about that round knows exactly why these *particular* people are so mad...

The author (Maya Bodnick) was ranked #1 in the country in the 2019-2020 season.

https://www.parliamentarydebate.org/rankings-2019-20

She's doing a lot of talking about Policy for someone who does such a kneecapped debate format (Parli). In Parli, the topic changes every round, and they have 20 minutes to prep, so there's no real depth to their research. They're not even allowed to bring up things they researched beforehand.

I'm a Parli debater who went to quarters at TOC this year -- our format may be handicapped, but in terms of Ks, pretty much everything Maya discussed applies directly to Parli. You may be thinking of east-coast ("lay") Parli where internet prep & files aren't allowed, as on most of the west coast pre-written Ks are run pretty regularly.

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