Appropriately second because adjudicators care about

appropriately; second, because adjudicators care about their own performance and success and
feedback is key to ensuring they’re appropriately recognised for their skill.
There are three types of feedback that Adjudication Cores collect:
● teams’ feedback on the adjudicator who delivered the adjudication,
● Chairs’ feedback on wings and trainees
● wings’ and trainees’ feedback on Chairs
Each type is important. The only way Adjudication Cores can effectively assess and allocate
adjudicators is if everyone participates in providing feedback.
Different Adjudication Cores will collect slightly different sets of information in their feedback forms.
In general, you should expect feedback forms to ask for:
● some form of overall score for the adjudicator
● some form of qualitative assessment of the adjudicator, often in the form of specific
questions about various skill sets or characteristics an adjudicator might display
● some form of opportunity for those giving feedback to make free-form comment on the
adjudicator in question, in order to ensure all important information is received by the
Adjudication Core
Feedback on adjudicators is confidential, and should generally be seen only by those giving it, the
Adjudication Core and the Tab Team (the latter will usually only see feedback in as much as they are
maintaining the system that receives it – they do not generally read individual feedback forms unless
they need to be manually entered from paper). On rare occasions, the Adjudication Core may need
to share aspects of feedback with the Equity Team where it relates to an equity violation – they will
usually consult with those who gave the feedback prior to doing so.
3.6 Some Additional Pitfalls to Avoid in Decision-Making and Feedback
What follows is a set of common mistakes that adjudicators may make in determining results and
giving feedback. We emphasise that many of the examples we give here aren’t examples of things an
adjudicator should never in any circumstances say – some could be given as an introductory
comment for a more substantive explanation. But adjudicators should not rest satisfied with such
statements as follow without further clarification and explanation to debaters.
Dealing in generalities rather than specifics
“We thought that the Third Negative really brought the case home for us, so the Negative won the
debate.”
“Affirmative had some interesting things to say, but the analysis didn’t really get good until Third
Speaker.”
It’s perfectly fine for adjudicators to use general language to introduce their reasons, provided that
each general statement is supported by examples of what actually happened. No statement of the
kind we’ve listed above should ever go unsupported by specific examples of the claim being made,
either during the deliberation or during feedback.
Granting certain ‘classes’ of arguments undue priority
“Only the Affirmative team knew the names of major Brazilian cities.”

“The Negative won because their arguments were moral rather than practical.”
This judging pitfall takes a number of forms, one of which is the fetishisation of the use of specific