Case Disclosure

[Artem]

let's talk about case disclosure
yeah

[JamesM]

Its probably a good thing. Hard to say exactly how it works in LD since most people dont have some kind of advocacy text. I would say people should disclose their value and criterion and some advantages if there are any.

[Arjun Pillai]

I'm just curious, are there any other negatives to disclosing your case other than giving your opponent a little more time to think?

[Sean Janda]

I could be wrong about this, but it definitely seems like it would greatly exacerbate the (already existing) time skew. I mean, in the status quo, negs already win far too much and, with case disclosure, I feel like negs would probably win far, far more.

Also, I know that people say that disclosure should help debaters from small schools, but I don't think it does. Even if people disclose, one or two debaters can't get through two hundred case flows in a week, whereas larger teams probably can, which, at the least, gives more nuanced/specific prep to debaters from larger schools. Also, at least in the status quo, debaters can often get around block spreads through very nuanced warrants, but it seems like disclosure (at least, disclosure of the full case) would definitely allow larger teams to make case specific files that answered those nuanced warrants, making it harder for smaller programs to compete.

[Cameron Baghai]

While I do think that disclosure could lead to more nuanced and developed rounds (i.e. better debates), the time skew idea is certainly an interesting issue. Case disclosure certainly would seem to benefit the negative more than the affirmative; after all, people sometimes complain of a "7 minute prep out" that made a round "impossible to win".
This could be mitigated a little bit by holding the neg to higher standards of disclosure (for example, requiring/requesting the neg disclose both the NC strat and the focus of argumentation on the AC), but I think that ultimately disclosure would make the debate even more skewed in the neg's favor. Holding the affirmative to lower standards of disclosure on the other hand (v, vc, contentions but not card names) might solve some of the problems of disclosure.
I also think holding the aff to lower standards would be better in terms of the issue of helping those without large teams or coaches. It would serve to give them case ideas to pursue and think about, but wouldn't give the bigger teams the ability to develop 7 minutes highly specific prep outs.
Another thing that could be useful is sharing citations but outside of the context of a case. In other words, putting up a webpage where people could post links to articles.

[Arjun Pillai]

Oh I see.
I was thinking of case disclosure as in a few minutes before the round, but I can see where this could be a problem.

[Cameron Baghai]

I've heard of disclosure right before and disclosure a while before. I think the former wouldn't really do much to help the smaller schools given that big ones have enough resources to utilize those few minutes effectively while small ones generally don't.

[Chris Catterton]

I'm somewhat sympathetic to calls for disclosure, but I still don't know what it would look like in LD. In policy, it is quite simple: the plan text and tag-cite, tag-cite, etc. Obviously LD cases aren't written like this (even teams like Northland have a framework and most folks have much more non-carded stuff than that). So I was wondering if someone from a school that strongly advocates disclosure (Greenhill? Meadows? Someone else?) could post a case and an outline of it. It'd be a big help in figuring out this debate.

[JPG]

I am on the same page as Chris, I think. I like the idea, generally, of improving transparency through disclosure, but I think we need to agree on some norm for what people should (have to?) contribute.

Most importantly, I think this starts with people taking the initiative to put some concrete reform in place. Before last season, the community had a pretty lengthy discussion about disclosure good/bad on VBD. The issue was that it never really got off the ground - no tournament really established disclosure as its official policy, though the NDCA added an LD section to its wiki, I think. Unfortunately, this wiki probably wasn't as publicized as it could be, and the culture of disclosure didn't take off.

Nevertheless, I think the LD community could still take a good shot at this. I should note that I had *zero* policy experience and I came from a school with no policy program, so I am not an authority on how this is done in that activity by any stretch of the imagination. However, I recall seeing runners picking up disclosure slips from judges after policy rounds at the MBA tournament. If a tournament had a small group of students who were committed to a) picking up summaries from judges and b) typing them up and entering the info on a wiki as the tournament progressed, it seems like disclosure is feasible with a little support from tournaments.

A preferable system would probably be self-disclosure since debaters could probably provide better intell, accurate cites, etc. when self reporting. Even if we wanted to establish this as a norm, we would still need someone to get the ball rolling. Perhaps self-disclosure could develop as a norm in the activity, but that stage might be down the road.

This doesn't really answer Chris's question of "how do we do this" at all. I think the only solution really is to push this concept from mere discussion to actual implementation. I am taking a guess that the policy system of disclosure has developed a bit since its inception, so I have trouble believing that we should abandon this idea because it may be flawed at its earliest stage.

[Ian Gunn]

In response to a brief mention earlier, I don't think strats need to be disclosed, nor do I think there are any advocating for them to be.

I'm kind of ambivalent in general on the issue of disclosure mainly because I don't see it as an feasible reality right now without easy ways to make it both practical and widespread. One thing to consider is the multiplicity of cases and strats being run now within Tournaments, even compared to 6 or 7 years ago. When we mean disclosure do we mean Aff and Neg? All cases or just ones planned to be run in prelims? What qualifies as a "case" (i.e. are dispositional or conditional CPs or Ks or other offs run in conjunction with one another each considered "cases"?)? If arguments like simple overviews are considered "cases" does that mean that blocks are fair game for disclosure also? And many NC strats now are conditional upon what the AC is. Would an Neg have to disclose all possible avenues, or just a few? What if it's a straight refutation NC?

It just seems like such a can of worms. There would have to be some kind of intermediate standard it seems to me, mainly because I can't see most debaters, or coaches for that matter, willing to disclose every one of their cases; nor do I think they should have to, especially at tournaments like the TOC. Obviously, as JP says the culture of disclosure would have to catch on; and, after a gradual acceptance/participation in disclosure (certain types are already occurring, i.e. post tournament/topic case disclosures) the real issue of requirement comes in. I think you could do something like require a debater to disclose a case they will be using in prelims, provided that they use that case in the majority of prelims. Or they can disclose all of their cases if they plan on using say 4 cases during prelims and don't want to use one case in the majority of rounds. This would still preserve the ability to break new cases in outrounds, where debaters will be better able to adapt and at the same time, provide both benefit and education to some in prelims.

Apologies for the length of the post, but as I'm writing this more and more problems just seem to leap out at me. There would have to be a consistent standard for case disclosure. Otherwise, debaters and coaches would have to keep track of a new tournament policy each week. Additionally, many debaters (e.g. myself when I debated, some of my kids I've coached, and friends) edit or change their cases at the last minute before a tournament or even before the round seeing problems or ways to improve. Would they then be locked into using their previously disclosed case? Perhaps there could be something like as long as 75% of it is the same it's ok, but then how do you keep track of how similar the revised version is to the old one. And this even seems to exclude the possibility of totally reworking the case. I still remember completely overhauling my primary NC on the plane to Stanford my senior year, essentially altering the entire thrust of the case and then going on to do excellent with it. The only solution that's popping up to me right now (and granted its late and I can't sleep and my brain isn't working all that well) is to not require debaters to use their disclosed cases. But if debaters don't use the cases they've disclosed, what's the point of disclosing them at all (as far tournament competition is concerned, education is obviously a separate issue)? Maybe someone else will have some more illuminating ideas...

[Artem]

I think the reason previous attempts to try out disclosure in LD have failed is that they occurred at tournaments, not at round robins.